GARSCON
2026

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Complete examination is hard to do during a marine stranding event. Limitations on manpower, equipment, and time, combined with factors such as weather, tide, and terrain, make record keeping a challenge. Using existing digital photography equipment, scaled 3D models of the scene can be created for later analysis. This photogrammetric approach to visual documentation takes photography to the next level, as scaled 3D models contain not only colors and features, but also volume, and even geospatial information. This project with the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society aims to use existing technology with new techniques to create enhanced tools for documenting stranding events and marine necropsies in 3D.

Seacoast Science Center Marine Mammal Rescue (MMR) team will highlight the expansion of our response territory from 2013 to June 2025 and the resulting growth of our team and the impact of our marine mammal stranding response efforts. We will discuss our 2025–2026 caseload, outreach activities, and new volunteer training and hires as we added Cape Ann. The presentation will also highlight key partnerships that support our response and research, including collaborations with Ocean Genome Lab and the Tufts Runstadler Lab. Finally, we will also be looking ahead at some new projects in the works!

Whale and Dolphin Conservation has recently expanded our response territory an additional 100 miles to include Boston aka Beantown! We will talk about the challenges and successes we've experienced over the past year as we adapted to responding in a highly urban area - including responses to live cetaceans and large whales.

In July 2026, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) responded to a mass stranding of 28 bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in Brewster, Massachusetts. Response to these animals continued over the course of several days, which included providing supportive care, tagging, monitoring, and herding swimming animals with vessels. Lessons learned from this event, and from previous large mass stranding events, have resulted in adaptations to protocols and equipment to better respond to future large events. These adaptations include modified field and supportive care kits, prioritization of tagging, and increased vessel and unmanned aircraft system-based monitoring. IFAW continues to evaluate protocol efficacy through ongoing internal analyses, which examine a multitude of factors related to the stranding event, considering variables such as time stranded, total time of response, release location and conditions, overall prognostic indicator score, and post-release success. Tracking these trends allows us to constantly refine our approach and ensure every animal welfare decision is backed by data. To further contribute to the investigations of and improvements in marine mammal stranding science, IFAW strongly values and participates in research collaborations, particularly those aligned with IFAW’s programmatic priorities and that have the potential to impact marine mammal welfare, health and/or conservation. Current collaborative research includes studies on local strandings in relation to climate change and oceanographic conditions; acoustic monitoring and delphinid communication; morphology, metabolomics and physiology; large whale migration and foraging ecology; small cetacean movement, habitat and foraging ecology; and remote biopsy sampling. By combining real-time lessons and innovations with multidisciplinary research, IFAW aims to strengthen marine mammal stranding science, response, and capacity across the Greater Atlantic region and beyond.

This update highlights continued growth in the New England Aquarium’s Rescue and Rehabilitation program through expanded cross-training with external colleagues and collaborators, major life support system improvements that include a new tank and decking, expanded sea turtle response territory, and continued growth in telemetry work. This year also marks an exciting new endeavor as the program takes on the Sea Turtle Sightings online reporting platform for boaters and other observers, while also piloting sea turtle stranding response along Cape Cod and southeastern Massachusetts for part of the year.

For more than 50 years, Mystic Aquarium’s Animal Rescue Program has conducted marine mammal and sea turtle stranding response throughout Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Fishers Island, New York. This sustained effort has generated a long-term dataset documenting stranding patterns, health trends, and potential anthropogenic and environmental influences on marine animals. Collectively, these data provide an important baseline for evaluating temporal and spatial changes in marine mammal and sea turtle populations and understanding how a changing coastal environment may influence each species. As environmental conditions and species distributions shift, the Animal Rescue Program has continued to expand its capacity to support research, conservation, and community-based stewardship. In recent years, the program has increased its sea turtle rehabilitation capacity by more than 300%, strengthening its ability to provide specialized care for threatened and endangered species while contributing valuable data to ongoing conservation efforts. At the same time, changes in marine mammal distribution, particularly the increasing abundance of gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) along the Rhode Island coastline, have resulted in more frequent responses to remote areas such as Block Island. These emerging patterns underscore the importance of sustained monitoring, long-term data collection, and strong community partnerships. By working with local communities, fishing partners, as well as state and federal agencies, the program helps build local capacity and resources to support the program’s efforts. These partnerships also create opportunities to educate the public about changing marine ecosystems and the challenges facing local marine life, while engaging local youth through hands-on learning and conservation experiences. Over five decades, Mystic Aquarium’s Animal Rescue Program has demonstrated how sustained stranding response can support both scientific research and conservation. Each response provides an opportunity to care for an individual animal while collecting valuable data that contributes to the Greater Atlantic Region Stranding Network and strengthens our understanding of changing marine ecosystems. As funding support across the network faces increasing uncertainty, engaging and educating the public about this work is more important than ever. Building strong community connections and demonstrating the value of stranding response is critical to sustaining the resources, partnerships, and programs needed to support stranding response programs across the Greater Atlantic Region Stranding Network.

The New York Marine Rescue Center (NYMRC) responds to live sea turtles and marine mammals throughout the state of New York, providing critical response and rehabilitation for injured, sick, and stranded marine animals. To date, NYMRC has responded to 6,326 marine animals, including 2,732 pinnipeds, 2,560 sea turtles, and 944 cetaceans. This fall, NYMRC will celebrate its 30th anniversary and is marking this milestone with significant facility improvements, increased rehabilitation capacity, and expanded research initiatives.

During the 2025 cold stun season, NYMRC increased its rehabilitation capacity with the purchase of a custom-built 22-foot oval tank. The tank was designed to provide underwater viewing of patients through two viewing windows and can be divided into six smaller pools, allowing NYMRC to accommodate patients at various stages of recovery. Earlier this year, NYMRC also upgraded its seasonal outdoor tank, which is particularly beneficial for larger loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles, by installing a movable cover. This cover allows the tank to remain open during the summer months, providing rehabilitation patients with exposure to natural outdoor conditions while also giving them access to a deeper pool that supports diving behavior and physical conditioning prior to release. Beginning this winter, the tank will be used year-round, further increasing NYMRC's capacity during the upcoming cold stun season. Future improvements include the addition of heaters to support appropriate air temperatures and a mechanical winch to safely assist with moving larger turtles into and out of the tank.

In addition to expanding in-house rehabilitation capacity, NYMRC is increasing its field research efforts to better understand sea turtle utilization of New York's coastal waters. Through the deployment of satellite tags and Customized Animal Tracking Solution (CATS) tags, NYMRC is investigating movement patterns, habitat use, and seasonal distribution of sea turtles within New York waters. Together, these facility improvements and research initiatives will strengthen NYMRC's ability to respond to increasing numbers of marine mammals and sea turtles while contributing valuable information to the conservation and management of New York's marine wildlife.

Ghost in the Marine
(Tracking a Rare Leucistic Dolphin with the Aid of Citizen Science)

Citizen science has emerged as a powerful tool for marine mammal monitoring, yet its utility in tracking rare phenotypic anomalies remains underexplored. This is a case study of a leucistic bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) sighted along the East Coast of the U.S. during the summer of 2026, and the role of citizen science and social media as a resource in documenting the geospatial movement and behavior of marine mammals.

This study underscores the value of participatory science in documenting range shifts and traits in coastal megafauna through the utilization of publicly driven sightings data and photo documentation, in conjunction with photo identification and data tracking platforms such as HappyWhale, iNaturalist, and WatchSpotter. Implementation of these systems provides a vital resource for documentation of species across a broad range, while successfully facilitating a cost-effective, scalable complement to traditional tracking methodology, particularly for highly recognizable cetaceans.

Speed talk presenter, Malia Hale: Meet the National Aquarium’s Animal Rescue Staff and new program Director, Malia Hale.

Speed talk presenter, Margot Madden: Learn about the National Aquarium’s Animal Rescue collaboration with John Hopkins University’s Medical and Biological Illustrations graduate program to create biological illustrations to depict this physiological phenomenon as a teaching tool for other scientists to utilize out in the field. In 2025, Grey Seal (Halichoerus grypus) Reverse Lanugo Molt, was created by Jamie Hefley. In 2026, Gastric gavage feeding for debilitated pinnipeds undergoing rehabilitation, was created by Nadya Steare.

Speed talk presenter, Maddie Welch: The National Aquarium Stranding Response Center’s staff based in Ocean City, Maryland, conducted a marine mammal population assessment pilot study that was grant funded by Maryland Coastal Bays Program from 2024 to 2025. The aim of this study was to determine the presence-absence of marine mammals in the back bays of Chincoteague and Sinepuxent. The team developed a saw-tooth transect grid search. Over the course of this project, the team observed dolphins on 7 out of the 16 surveys, with majority of sighting events occurring along the Northern route (n=10). Seventeen unique dolphin events were recorded from June through October, with group sizes ranging from 1 to 20 individuals.

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