After my sojourn in Seattle, I headed north almost to the border of Canada for a wildlife conference. Right from the start it was a fabulous conference, and the most interesting I have been to by far (in fact, I barely missed any of the talks because they were all so great!). There were about 300 people there, and we had talks about rabies in squirrels, ebola in gorillas, the best way to rescue wildlife caught in oil spills (there is quite an art to this, I didn’t even realise!), toxic algal blooms and their effect on marine life, the social structure of orca pods in Puget Sound, beluga whales, toxicity from lead shot in birds, infectious diseases in Australian finfish, bison breeding programs, toxicity in Kakapo (that will teach them to destroy cars and buildings!), effects of a shipwreck on a coral reef, winter elk feeding grounds... and of course platypuses! My talk went pretty well (got a lot of questions and only counted three people that were asleep...) and I was excited as I came second in the student presentation competition!
The best part about the conference was the fact that everyone there was so friendly and pretty down to earth. They all seemed really passionate about the work they were doing, and maybe being a fan of animals often means that you are a friendly person, because I found everyone to be really approachable, even the really big names in wildlife science who were in attendance. There were a lot of social events which was great, and I made a whole lot of grad student friends from all over the US. They taught me things such as a bit of ‘American’, how to make S’mores (wierd combo of sweet biscuits sandwiching bonfire-toasted marshmallow and melted Hershey’s chocolate), and also that Americans can be a little crazy (when a bunch of them went for a midnight swim in what I imagine to be near arctic waters as a nocturnal polar bear challenge). Hopefully I’ll be going on quite a few visits while I’m here and it will be fun in the future to have American friends visit Australia!
There was also some bonding time on wildlife-related trips- we went whale watching and saw a pod of orcas off the coast. One of the females was 98 years old (there is a well-documented genealogy for the whale pods in Puget Sound, and they are identified by the shape of their fins)! They were enormous- the fin of an adult is taller than a person. We saw them do some interesting behaviours including several breaches (where they leap out of the water- very cool), and a ‘spy-hop’, where they pop their head and upper torso upright out of the water to take a better look at things (I didn’t actually see this but I heard it in the form of the whale naturalist on board shrieking in excitement). We also saw a pair of bald eagles, and even a seal colony living on a derelict part of a wharf near the conference.
So all in all, it was a really fantastic experience for my second international conference and will definitely be a highlight of my American adventure. I am now looking forward to going to more wildlife conferences in the future and it was inspiring for me to see the potential for wildlife-related research for me if I decide to do a post-doc (I know, scary!).