Marine mammals face an increasing number of health threats. The increasing frequency of emerging diseases, harmful algal blooms (HABs), and human interactions suggest a decline in marine mammal health. However, scientific publications about these events are not a reliable indicator of underlying health trends (Simeone et al 2015). Access to centralized, standardized marine mammal health data is important to help highlight and understand the connections between oceanography, ecosystem processes and marine mammal health. The Marine Mammal Commission and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Office of Protected Resources, in collaboration with Axiom Data Science and other partners, have been developing a nationally centralized, ultimately near-real-time, system for reporting data on marine mammal health called the Marine Mammal Health Monitoring and Analysis Platform (MMHMAP). Beginning in October 2016 a project led by Axiom Data Science is working to develop the user interface, visualization and analysis tools for Health MAP.
More information can be found through the MMHMAP website here.
