ECS Conference material 2025 — Emily T. Griffiths

When I was younger, I used to think that only getting a poster at a conference was a mark against me. As in, I wasn’t good enough for a talk, and so now I had to fit everything onto a piece of paper that no one would read.

However, I now recognize that a poster can be the better medium for the story you are trying to tell. Sometimes, what you are trying to present is meant to engender conversation, for which a poster is absolutely perfect. Folks can come by and you can walk them through your scientific story, answering questions and asking a few of your own as you go. It’s more intimate, and is ideal for observational or opportunistic studies which may have not benefited from the scientific method.

Case in point, this year at the 36th annual European Cetacean Society conference, I will be presenting work spearheaded by my colleague Dr. Mel Cosentino. It’s an observational report of orcas harassing adult male sperm whales above 69° N off Norway. In our paper, presently in review, we walk the reader through four of these encounters. I’m just highlighting the best documented one, and of course the one that has a recording of the bioacosutics. :) For this poster, all I can do is describe what was documented at the time, and study the associated wave file. I look forward to talking to other people working in northern latitudes, and perhaps sharing insights on other sperm whale recordings that mirror the acoustic behavior we documented. Bluntly, this would not be a good talk, at least not on its own. But presented as a poster, it can help inform a developing study, and I’ll be right there to brainstorm with them while they are learning about what we documented.

My poster is below. Feel free to reach out and ask me questions. I’ve also included png files of the art I created for the poster, because why not? Lastly, the associated sound file is also available to freely download.

See ya’ll in the Azores.