1 May 2026. The view outside the wall of windows offered an inviting scene with Lake Bled, the mountains and setting sun. Yet, following a long days’ work at the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee (IWC SC) meetings in Bled, Slovenia, more than 125 scientists filled a conference room to learn more about Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs) and Protecting Blue Corridors. The get-together aimed to forge new collaborations between the two initiatives and the IWC SC.
A special event with wine, food, short talks, a panel and discussion, this was one of the first ever special side events in the history of the annual/biennial IWC Scientific Committee meetings. The audience was comprised of field scientists, as well as modellers and others. A show of hands revealed that a third to nearly half of them had contributed to one or more of the 11 to-date IMMA workshops, since 2016.
Simone Panigada, deputy chair of the Task Force, chaired the event and explained how it came to be with joint organisation by the IMMA Secretariat, WWF and the IWC SC. It was funded by Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) and WWF.
First Gill Braulik, also a deputy Task Force chair, presented the history of the IMMA programme going back to the founding of the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force in 2013. She showed the IMMA identification process and how the resulting IMMA spatial layers were being used by industry, academia, MPA and other conservation practitioners, and reminded all that they are available free for download.
Next Alex Zerbini spoke about how the WWF-initiated Blue Corridors project had designed animated maps on a dedicated website that showed the migratory paths of baleen whales. Walking us through the website, he showed snapshots, species by species and then the global view which simultaneously animated the documented annual migration paths of multiple whale species all over the ocean, day-by-day throughout the year.
For the final part, a panel was convened with Lindsay Porter, Erich Hoyt, Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, Ari Friedlaender, and Emma Carroll to give comments in response to prepared questions and then the audience began asking questions.
One audience member commented on the remarkable cooperation and contributions of multiple research teams, formerly protective of their data. This was true for both the Blue Corridors and the IMMA project. We may be entering a new era of cooperation between researchers who are more and more eager to see their work used for public information and conservation.
In recent news, announced during the evening, the IMMA programme was celebrated for winning the Pink Dolphin Award in Hong Kong while Protecting Blue Corridors received the Oscar-like Webby Award in the Best Data Visualization category.
