Society for Marine Mammalogy
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| Founded | 1981 |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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President: Jay Barlow President-Elect: Ann Pabst Immediate Past President: Nick Gales Secretary: Tara Cox Treasurer: Tim Ragen |
| Publication | Marine Mammal Science |
| Mission | The mission of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) is to promote the global advancement of marine mammal science and contribute to its relevance and impact in education, conservation and management. |
| Website | www.marinemammalscience.org |
The Society for Marine Mammalogy was founded in 1981 and is the largest international association of marine mammal scientists in the world.
The mission of the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) is to promote the global advancement of marine mammal science and contribute to its relevance and impact in education, conservation and management.
The Biennial Conferences on the Biology of Marine Mammals predate the founding of the Society which now supports them. They were a successor to Tom Poulter's "Annual Conference on Biological Sonar and Diving Mammals" held at the Stanford Research Institute (formally separated from Stanford University in 1970 and now known as SRI International) in Menlo Park, California, beginning in 1964. After Tom's passing, Dr. Ken Norris instigated the First Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, hosted by UC Santa Cruz in 1975. A second Biennial followed in 1977 in San Diego, supported by the U.S. Naval Ocean Systems Center. Attendance at the first conference was about 300 and at the second 480. Following the second conference, George Harry, then Director of what is now the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, initiated discussions about forming a society to organize and run the conferences. In 1978, Ken Norris took the major steps of preparing a "Preliminary Design of a Society of Marine Mammalogy" and forming an organizational committee (consisting of Tom Dohl, George Harry, Burney LeBeouf, John Lilly, Ken Norris, Bill Perrin, Bill Powell and Forrest Wood, later expanded to include Bob Elsner, Bill Evans, Lou Herman and Ron Schusterman). The new society would "provide a vehicle for promoting the science of marine mammalogy." Proposed functions:
The committee met during the Third Biennial in Seattle in 1979 and discussed the preliminary design, proposed criteria for membership, and suggested by-laws. All was firmed up by correspondence, and at the Fourth Biennial in San Francisco in 1981, Ken presented the need and plans for a society to a meeting of those conference participants interested in forming one. The proposal was accepted by the group, and Ken was elected the first President by consensus. He then launched into the knotty tasks of confirming charter members, drafting a constitution and by-laws, getting the Society officially incorporated, recruiting people to act as interim Secretary, Treasurer and chairs of the committees on membership and nominations/elections, and helping start organization of the Fifth Biennial and the first full election. Attendance has grown from the 300 in 1975 to more than 2000 in some of the venues.
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