Special Session #3

In an era of unprecedented global changes, to keep the marine ecosystems healthy is essential for the well-being of planet Earth. The monitoring of sentinel species such as marine mammals and sea turtles represents the cornerstone to evaluate human activities’ impacts on marine ecosystems functioning. This special session aims to collect contributions related to the application of new technologies, computer science and statistical strategies to the integration of biological and environmental data, aimed to increase knowledge on the bio-ecology of marine mammals and marine turtles, essential for the implementation of conservation measures, according to the ecosystem-based management approach.

Giulia Cipriano holds a PhD in Environmental Science and she is a research fellow in Ecology at the Department of Biology, University of Bari. Her main scientific research interest is the application of biological, statistical and mathematical models to marine ecology and population dynamics focused on cetacean. She performs her scientific activity also in the field of fishery stock assessment and environmental remediation aimed to implement management measure of anthropogenic pressures which insist in Taranto seas and protection actions of species of particular conservation interest.
She shows expertise in the implementation and analysis of biological/environmental data in GIS environment. She has (co)-authored more than 40 scientific publications in congress proceedings, national and international ISI journals and she is a reviewer for international ISI journals.

Rosalia Maglietta holds a Ph.D. in Physics and a Master Degree on Remote Sensing from the University of Bari. She is researcher at the National Research Council (Italy). Her main scientific interests are in the fields of machine learning and pattern recognition, including design and development of strategies for supervised and unsupervised learning, development of algorithms for 3D and 2D images segmentation and analysis, feature extraction, learning models for imbalanced and big data. The application fields of interest are marine biology, ecological informatics, bioinformatics and medicine. She collaborated in many scientific researches and projects based on the observation, monitoring, modelling and understanding of inland and marine environment using technologies and intelligent systems. She has a collaborative partnership with the Jonian Dolphin Conservation NGO, providing insights for structured collection and intelligent analysis of data obtained during marine mammal’s observations. In 2017 she obtained a laudable service attestation as part of the activities carried out for the National Research Council. She has co-authored about 70 papers in international journals and conference. She serves as editor and referee for International journal and conferences.

Aylin Akkaya holds a PhD to assess the impact of marine traffic on the behavioral budget of delphinids in the Istanbul Strait. She founded DMAD-Marine Mammals Research Association in 2015 after working in the field of animal behavior for over 10 years and currently works as a director of DMAD as well as the marine mammal consultant of WWF-Turkey. Her background mainly focused on gathering the baseline information for threatened species and measuring the impact of human endured activities on these wild animals. Her main scientific interests lie in survey designs, geographic information systems, animal behavior, photo-identification, population estimates, species vocal repertoire and threat assessment. Currently, she runs dedicated surveys within the least studied regions of the Mediterranean Sea to fill the existing knowledge gaps on cetaceans for effective conservation and mitigation strategies. She has published over 30 articles in international journals to reveal the first results of dedicated efforts, mainly in Turkey and Montenegro.

Marta Azzolin holds a PhD on Science and High Technology from the University of Torino (Italy), and a Master Degree on Integrated Coastal Zone Management from the University of Ravenna (Italy). She is a lecturer at the Life Science and System Biology Department of the University of Turin, where she teaches a course on cetaceans' ethology. Her research lines are cetaceans' population studies, ecology, acoustics, behaviour, and interaction with human activities (fishery, boat traffic, aquaculture). She is president of Gaia Research Institute Onlus NGO and its cetaceans' acoustic and behaviour expert. She works as director of research activities carried out by Gaia NGO in Greece (Eastern Ionian Sea and Gulf of Corinth). She researches cetaceans since 1994, cooperating with many Universities and NGOs. Starting from a behavioural study in a controlled environment, she moved to the natural environment in 1996. She deepened her knowledge in the USA at the University of San Diego (SDSU) and in the Bahamas, cooperating with the Bahamas Research Centre (Abaco). She collaborated to the scientific supervision of the LIFE project "Del.Ta." for the conservation of dolphin and sea turtle in the Pelagie Archipelago. From 2004 her main interest moved to cetacean's acoustic species identification and intra-species geographical variability. Lately, she started working on the analysis of cetacean acoustic behaviour in relation to the behaviour observed from the surface. She always brought in the framework of her studies innovative approach. She tested new software as Observer and Boris (Friard and Gamba) for cetaceans behavioural studies and Tria and Rocca for the acoustic ones. She is author of about 70 papers in international journals and conference. She serves as a referee for international journals.