At the 2007 Annual meeting the Scientific Committee agreed to hold a Workshop on  the examination and review of cetacean skin diseases, with specific emphasis on the issues in South America. Many of these diseases are of unknown aetiology and have been reported in cetaceans from scattered locations world-wide. They have so far, been predominantly encountered in cetaceans occupying or transiting coastal habitat, suggesting anthropogenic causes or contributing factors.

The Terms of Reference for the Workshop are:

1. exploitation of visual assessments of skin disease by utilization of high-definition digital imaging in addition to traditional assessments from necropsy; and
2. the use of existing archives of photo-identification images world-wide, many of which may allow a long-term retrospective trends analysis.

Venue and timing: two days immediately before the 2008 Scientific Committee meeting in Santiago, Chile.

Steering Group: Rowles & Van Bressem (Convenors; Teri.Rowles@noaa.gov & marievanbressem@yahoo.co.uk), Brownell, Di Guardo, Fernández, Iñiguez, Galletti.

The following documents are available to download: