The Global Stranding Network
The Global Stranding Network (GSN) was founded in 2019 at the World Marine Mammal Conference in Barcelona in response to the call for action articulated in the Barcelona Declaration. The Declaration’s second goal emphasized the need to “enhance and strengthen international collaboration to (1) ensure consistent, high-quality response to stranded marine mammals globally, and (2) support conservation efforts for species under threat of extinction.”
The GSN’s mission is to connect people responding to marine mammal strandings world-wide and support response efforts through a community driven, “bottom-up”, approach to resource sharing, capacity building, and international collaboration. This is done by providing information on stranding response and investigations that is publicly available in a single website, and holding workshops and online webinars. The GSN aims to provide links to other online resources and national and regional stranding networks, rather than duplicate effort. Membership of the network is open to all individuals and organisations responding to strandings, with additional information available to members on the password-protected member resources section of the website.
Map showing the locations of presenters/participants to Global Stranding Cafes to date
The GSN co-hosts regular bi-monthly “Marine Mammal Case Study Cafés” in collaboration with the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) Strandings Initiative. These “Cafés” are informal online gatherings where participants can present a brief 5-minute case study from their work, discuss cases, receive valuable insights, and connect with colleagues. The webinar series occasionally includes ‘special event’ webinars that focus on specific topics of interest. Special event webinars to date have focused on rabies in Cape fur seals, the Amazonian River dolphin unusual mortality event, and sirenians. For more information on these events, please visit the GSN’s meetings and workshops webpage or contact Andrew Brownlow (andrew.brownlow@glasgow.ac.uk) or Kristi West (kristiw@hawaii.edu).
The GSN will be co-hosting a workshop with the IWC at the upcoming Society of Marine Mammalogy Biennial Conference titled in Puerto Rico. The workshop is titled Enhancing Diagnostics and Global Collaboration. The primary objective of the workshop is to enhance the global response to marine mammal strandings by improving connectivity and coordination in diagnostic capabilities. The workshop will include a hands-on training component in disease screening for stranding responders that will be led by Dr. Wei-Cheng Yang from National Taiwan University. The workshop will be held on Saturday, October 17, 2026. To attend this workshop, please sign up on the SMM conference website.
For more information on upcoming initiatives and events, please consider joining the GSN!