Day 3 of the conference

Wow, that was a really good sleep!

I'm giving my talk today about the experience of getting the two big Special Protection Areas classified in Liverpool Bay and the Outer Thames Estuary. I'm much calmer now after getting the first workshop out of the way. That's a bit worrying, because I need some adrenaline to help me perform for my talk. I've got a total of 20 minutes to get my point across, and I know I've got too much material.

Linda gives a talk just before mine on the offshore SPAs, and does another solid job. My turn now, and it goes well. I focus on how this is a real life scientific solution created under extreme pressure. There seemed to be quite a few extra people turn up, which is quite flattering. I run short of time at the end, and I have to rush some of the more complex slides toward the end, but I manage to leave enough time for a question at the end. It's a good one, about how you can use the the legislation to protect their prey fish in finding a solution, including dealing with their migration outside the boundary. I think I give a good answer about how a plan or project outside the boundary could trigger protective measures based on the protective requirements of the species within the boundary.

We have to prepare some material for another workshop which about combining analyses from a global at-sea seabird database with a similar tracking database. I'm co-convening this with Cleo Small from Birdlife International. We both feel shattered, but manage to pull together an agenda. It goes well. The presentations are all really focused and it has much more of a workshop feel about it, rather than a talk-shop. Lots of exchange of interesting ideas of how to overcome the analytical challenges of viewing these different datasets. Poor Cleo is shattered, and asks me if I can chair the discussion session. I do what I can, and feel the discussion dry up a bit at times, but it goes OK, and people seem happy with how it went.

I go for a drink after the poster paper session, and both Linda (who talked some more about her tern tracking work) and James Grecian made a point about how helpful they found the workshop. That was really nice of them to say so.

Kees Camphuysen and Jim at the poster session