Marine Mammal Stranding Network Analysis

In week 7, Jennifer Olson gave a presentation talk on the stranding network in San Juan County Washington. Olson talked about the importance of the stranding network and in what ways their team is doing adding to the vast amount of information known on these animals.The Marine Mammal Stranding Network is important due to contributioning knowledge and help it provides. Not only this, but the stranding network uses this data to present/ inform management decisions. This knowledge is valuable due to exposing human and/or ecosystem health issues. Furthermore, the stranding network also helps to educate the public about marine mammals and the correct way to interact with them. The stranding network does pup tagging, entanglement surveys, necropsies, …show more content…
Tagging the seal pups allows the personal to track the animals to get a better estimate of the population size, to document any deaths or births, and to survey the health of the animal before and after tagging. In addition to, tagging is important to help people to know that these animals are valuable to their ecosystem and to change the public's attitude by personally responding to their requests for help. Furthermore, the entanglement surveys the standing network provides is also important. When personal find entangled animals, they can document the number of entangled animals in a period of time and the extent of the injuries. Likewise, they can catalog the type of anthropogenic material that is collected from the live or dead animals to see which type is the most dangerous, and to implement solutions to stop these materials from causing more deaths in the future. When a marine mammal is found dead, the Marine Mammal Stranding Network sends personal to document Level A data which tells the date they found the mammal, species, location and condition of animal, the age class, sex, morphometric data, evidence of human interaction (if there was any), and disposition. It is important to get as many details as possible when collecting Level A data to get the whole picture of the species death for future record use. They often can get the majority of this data from performing …show more content…
The stranding network is important due to being able to collect data from animals that might not be accessible normally. And being able to find out what killed the animals, whether if the species death was from human influence, boat strikes, pollution, entanglements, starvation, or bioaccumulation of toxins. However, something that the standing network does not do well is that sometimes they are not able to respond in time, due to having to call in a government official or trained personal to collect/help the species in time, and so often the animal might die, the carcass could melt if in the sun for to long, or the carcass could sink if waiting for an entanglement