CRC CRC HDBK MARINE MAMMAL MEDIC PDF

Preface

It has been more than 10 years since the first edition of the Handbook of Marine Mammal Medicine was published; during that time, the book has sold consistently (almost 2000 copies worldwide). Since its publication in 1990, there has been an exponential growth of experience and published literature addressing marine mammal medicine. Marine mammals have captured the imagination of not only the public, but also the scientific community. Despite this increase in information, much remains to be learned about the medicine of marine mammals. We hope that by sharing what is known to date, veterinarians will be encouraged to explore the unknown, and share this new information in the future.

The meaning of the phrase "marine mammal medicine" has greatly expanded, and the contents of this second edition attempt to reflect this. As we enter the new millennium, veterinarians are not only involved in diagnosis and treatment of disease, but also in the bigger picture, including marine mammals as sentinels of ocean health, animal well-being, marine mammal strandings and unusual mortality events, legislation governing marine mammal health and population trends, and tagging and tracking of rehabilitated and released animals. To care for marine mammals effectively, veterinarians also need to understand their anatomy, physiology, and behavior. As the field develops, we must encourage new members of the profession and be able to advise students on careers in the field of marine mammal medicine. We hope our vision of what marine mammal medicine is in the 21st century becomes yours.

With 66 contributors, and almost 100 reviewers, all working together to help craft 45 scientifically based chapters, we believe the contents of this textbook are light-years ahead of the topics presented in the first edition of the Handbook of Marine Mammal Medicine. For these extraordinary efforts, we wish to offer our utmost thanks to everyone involved. We appreciate the time taken away from their work to share their knowledge and experience with others. With all the reference books, journals, e-mails, and Web sites each author investigated, this second edition is an explosion of new information. We apologize for any current medical literature on marine mammals we may have inadvertently overlooked in this effort.

Almost every year since 1995, CRC Press, the publisher of the first edition of the handbook, has contacted one of the editors (Dierauf) asking if she "would be interested in publishing a second edition?" And almost every year since 1995, due to time constraints, more than full-time commitments elsewhere, and the fact that her current efforts are directed toward habitat protection for threatened and endangered species (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Albuquerque, NM) and environmental education (co-founder and chair of the Alliance of Veterinarians for the Environment, Nashville, TN), she has emphatically and succinctly said "no." Except, for early fall, 1999, when she hesitated . . . said she had to make a few phone calls, and would call back.

The phone calls were to the now coeditor (Gulland) and, although she too had been asked previously and declined, she too hesitated. It really was time, almost the 10-year anniversary of the first edition; there was so much new information, so many new scientists entering the field, and an amazing array of students calling for help in advancing future careers in marine mammal medicine. We agreed that it was indeed time, if we could persuade fellow colleagues to join us in this effort. To our great surprise and wonder, considering how pressed for time everyone is these days, more than 90% of the scientists we called enthusiastically agreed to participate.

We called CRC in October 1999, and said, "yes." We are proud of our authors and our publisher for bringing this second edition to publication promptly to ensure that the information presented is as up to date and future oriented as is possible in this age of information.

The first edition of this book limited its scope to U.S. and Canadian issues and species. This edition tries harder to address international concerns and the worldwide practice of marine mammal medicine. We chose to write the text in (no, not English — sorry Frances!) American (phrases, spelling) for consistency with the first edition. Both metric and American measurements are provided, and there is a conversion table in the appendix.

In the references at the end of each chapter, we include abstracts from conference proceedings (many of which can be found on the International Association for Aquatic Animal Medicine, or IAAAM, CD-ROM; see Chapters 7 and 8 for ordering information), as well as peer-reviewed books and journals. This is to provide the reader with as much current information as possible; the reader is encouraged to seek peer-reviewed journal articles by the same authors as their pieces are published. We have Web information from reputable sources within the context of each chapter (in bold ), information from veterinary and marine scientists through personal communications (pers. comm.), unpublished data (unpubl. data), cross-referencing that refers to pertinent information in other chapters (see Chapter ...), and an extensive index.

The chapters in this second edition have been peer-reviewed. Yet, despite this peer-reviewed information, the editors still wish to emphasize that, in the practice of marine mammal medicine, nothing —not Web information, not journal information, not e-mail information— substitutes for talking to your peers and colleagues prior to performing a new procedure, or administering a pharmaceutical to a marine mammal. Nothing beats a healthy exchange of questions, answers, and experiences to assist in decision making.

Again, we wish to thank everyone we have worked with over the past year (authors, coauthors, editors, peer-reviewers, colleagues) for giving us their unending support, for responding to our unceasing phone calls and e-mails, and for helping us maintain our enthusiasm. We thank Raymond Tarpley, David St. Aubin, Shannon Atkinson, and Bill Amos for wonderful last-minute rescues. We offer special thanks to the staff and volunteers at The Marine Mammal Center, in Sausalito, CA (we quietly refer to these Editorial and Literary Volunteers as our "elves") for their consistent, constant, and voluntary efforts on behalf of this production. In particular, we thank Rebecca Duerr, Danielle Duggan, Denise Greig, Michelle Lander, Gayle Love, Alana Phillips, Kathryn Zagzebski, Kelly Alman, Amber Clutton-Brock, and Tanya Zabka. Thanks are due to Andy Draper for ensuring polar bears were not left out in the cold, and to both Andy Draper and Jim Hurley for keeping our spirits up. We could not have done this without the help of every one of you.