The US National Marine Animal Health and Stranding Response Conference (September 2016)

By Putu Liza Mustika

The US National Marine Animal Health and Stranding Response Conference that I attended in early September (6-9 Sept 2016) was not the first of its kind that I attended at a national level, but it was certainly the most impressive one. My sincere thanks to International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) for their generous contributions so that I could attend this event, and for NOAA for extending the invitation to me.

The conference enabled me to learn many things to apply to Indonesia’s own national marine mammal stranding network. The followings are lessons I learned during some sessions of the conference. Granted, I couldn’t attend all sessions as much as I wanted to. For instance, given my limited medical/veterinarian knowledge, I only attended some veterinary sessions that my Indonesian vet colleagues would have not missed for the world. However, what I’ve learned from the sessions I did attend was a treasure. The followings are things that I learned the most during the conference, not necessarily in the order of magnitude nor importance. 

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