In April Sea Alarm sadly had to say goodbye to Roser Gasol. Roser had been working for Sea Alarm since February 2006 and has been significantly contributing to the many achievements the organisation had in that four year period.
Sea Alarm was invited by the ProBird group in Germany to attend and lecture on a volunteer course they were organising last April. The course took place in Rastede, in one of the wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centres in the North of Germany, and was attended by ca 20 new volunteers.
Saskia Sessions was invited to the recent ENSACO workshop that took place on 13-14 April in Helsinki, Finland. She was requested to lecture on integrated oiled wildlife response and planning and moderate a Sea Alarm table top exercise on wildlife response planning processes.
Sea Alarm was invited to attend a stakeholder consultation meeting at the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) on 5 March in Lisbon, Portugal. EMSA is an EU agency working towards safer and cleaner shipping and has a multi-annual programme dedicated to preparedness and response to pollution at sea from ships.
It is not unusual that from time to time seabirds are washed ashore covered in substances that apparently have killed them, but that look strange and sometimes potentially dangerous. In the Netherlands, where beaches are intensively and systematically monitored for scientific purposes, these events do not pass unnoticed. Last March seabirds were found in large numbers on the shores of the northwest Dutch coast covered in a substance that looked like glue.
Leading US wildlife response groups have been mobilised to the Gulf of Mexico to help local responders deal with oiled wildlife following the oil spill from the Deepwater horizon drilling rig, which sank following an explosion and fire on 20 April.
The OWCN is currently seeking research proposals from wildlife professionals interested in furthering OWCN goals for the 2010-2011 funding period. In particular, proposals investigating the direct and indirect effects of oil on wildlife, baseline biomedical studies and improvements to oiled rehabilitation techniques are strongly encouraged.
The Bonn Agreement Secretariat has sent a questionnaire to all the Contracting Parties of the Agreement in order to collect information on current practices with regards to oiled wildlife response and preparedness. This was an action that was agreed in last year’s meeting of OTSOPA, the technical working group of the Agreement.
Friday February 26: Sea Alarm put an assessment team on stand by in order to travel to Italy and assist with the initiation of an oiled wildlife response, at the request of the Italian authorities. In the morning Sea Alarm was alerted by Ezio Amato, a scientist and emergency response specialist of ICRAM, the Central Institute for Applied Scientific Research of the Sea, who asked if Sea Alarm would be prepared to assist in the developing incident.
We were very sad to hear that on 20 February Melina Mosch passed away after losing a long lasting battle against cancer; she was only 28 years of age. Despite her illness, which was diagnosed two years ago, Melina took any opportunity to continue doing what she thought was her main call and drive: saving the lives of animals.
During a recent visit to Helsinki in the framework of HELCOM Response, Sea Alarm’s Hugo Nijkamp met with Vesa Numinen and Tomi Rask of the Helsinki City Rescue Department (HCRD) to discuss oiled wildlife response preparedness.
During his recent visit to Helsinki, Hugo Nijkamp gave a two hour lecture to more than 30 volunteers of WWF Finland. The volunteers are trained to assist in oil spill incidents in Finland where they play a main role in the shoreline cleanup and wildlife response, as part of a programme which is coordinated by WWF Finland, in close cooperation with Finland’s National Environmental Institute (SYKE) and the Rescue Departments.