Mission travel has dictated our work over the last few weeks, so the Secretariat finds itself in catch-up mode these first few days of February. The Coordinator travelled to Bonn, Germany, for wide-ranging discussions with colleagues in the Secretariat of the Convention on Migratory Species, in his capacity as Senior CMS Advisor. The parent Convention has a very full agenda in the coming months, some of which involves the outposted CMS office in Bangkok.

From there, he travelled to Paris to attend a well-organised symposium bringing together French turtle practitioners from around the world, as described in more detail in an upcoming IOSEA feature article. Taking advantage of this infrequent trip to Europe, he travelled next to the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) in Cambridge, UK, which has worked closely with CMS / IOSEA for the better part of two decades.

Discussions there focused on the transfer of the IOSEA Interactive Mapping System (IMAPS) to a more technologically advanced platform; and on ongoing work for CMS related to the development of flexible reporting and analysis tools. With its Online Reporting Facility, IOSEA has led the way in this area for many years, and hopefully some of its analytical tools will find their way into the system that WCMC is currently developing. If so, the new application might eventually be attractive for IOSEA purposes as well.

After brief stopovers in Bonn and Bangkok, the Coordinator has just returned from a short mission to Manila, on behalf of CMS, related to the organisation of the forthcoming "Third Meeting on International Cooperation on Migratory Sharks" to be held in the Philippine capital from 8-12 February 2010. Two additional CMS-related commitments are foreseen in the coming weeks: a meeting of the East Asia - Australasia Flyway Partnership towards the end of February, and the Seventh Meeting of Signatories to the CMS Siberian Crane MoU, in March. Later this month, Phuket, Thailand, will be the venue for the annual “SEASTAR" workshop which brings together marine scientists and other experts to discuss research developments concerning sea turtles and other marine species.

In closing, we thank Dr Jeanne Mortimer for her comprehensive overview this month of tags and tagging in Seychelles, which will also be of considerable interest to many others beyond that Western Indian Ocean island State.

As always, we would be delighted to publish your contributions as feature articles or Profiles of the Month that will be read by hundreds of followers of the website from around the world -- so keep them coming!