In early August 2016, I and over 500 others, including scientists, conservation practitioners, and educators, attended the International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC) in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. It was my first time attending a marine themed conference! I was there to present on multidisciplinary projects that I and colleagues are pursuing both in coupling science, art and poetry and in bringing together marine and freshwater conservation scientists to overcome complex and complementary conservation challenges. I took the opportunity to write about my experiences at IMCC, sharing about our Poetry Workshop, which is posted on Real Scientists Blog (!!) and about our facilitated discussion on Fostering Marine-Freshwater Conservation Collaborations, which is written up in the Marine Ecosystems and Management newsletter!
Cartoon fish highlighting the need for collaboration between marine and freshwater scientists.
Art by Stephanie Januchowski-Hartley.
As our SCB-ES membership representative, I also had the opportunity to meet and engage with many scientists at IMCC, including students who contributed blog posts for our SCB-ES blog post competition! I am excited for you to hear their stories from the conference, and how their experiences link back to their own research and conservation more broadly. You will get to hear from our two student contributors, Leah and Adam in the coming weeks! Leah's post focuses on her experiences at IMCC learning about the intricate ties between power, privilege and equity, and science and conservation. Adam's post focuses on the importance of collaboration between marine scientists and community members, and shares his reflections on different approaches he learned about at IMCC that are used to form those collaborations.
Thanks for following along, and reading our stories and reflections from IMCC. I hope that we get to meet many of you at future conferences too, and to hear about and share your stories. If you are a student member of SCB-ES and are interested in contributing to our blog, please get in touch! We are always looking for interesting stories to share!
Stay tuned for Leah's blog post in the next few days.
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Post by Steph Januchowski-Hartley
About the author: Steph is a Postdoctoral Researcher at University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France. In addition to her research on dam impacts on freshwater fishes, she also draws, writes poetry and is an active member of the Society for Conservation Biology! 
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