Best wishes from the President
December 20th, 2015
Dear Friends of MICS,
We have gotten through our 37th field season in large part due to the generous support of MICS supporters. Our goals remain the pursuit of long-term studies of rorquals in the St. Lawrence and North Atlantic, with special attention to the endangered blue whale.
As we move towards 2016, we need your continued support in order to keep a research team in Mingan in the coming year. Funding remains a challenge with greater demands on private and public funding institutions.
We are working on creating the Friends of MICS, which we hope will interest all of you who have joined us in Mingan, Gaspe, or the Azores, as well as those who follow us online. The Friends of MICS program can provide a longterm partnership, where those who want to support our work make yearly donations in return for news previews and other goodies. All Friends of MICS donations will be exclusively used to fund research. In the meantime, why not check out our humpback whale adoption programme? Donate $111 and receive an electronic adoption package!
Your donations, are always vital to our organization's work yearround. The threats of increased toxic, organic, and acoustic pollution, oil exploration, food chain disruption and climate change in the St Lawrence ecosystem remain.
Your donations support our ability to continue adding to our unique and invaluable long-term data set. In an age of expendiancy, maintaining long-term data sets is vital, particularly when studying long-lived species.
In 2015 we were again able to offer internships to 10 very promising students, some of whom will most likely join our team in the futur and pursue graduate studies. The ability to accept interns, graduate students, as well as provide the general public with education programs, is also supported by your donations.
If you feel that independent studies of marine ecosystems and marine mammals are important please donate. Every donation helps. You can make payments directly online (please click our "Donate" button on the right-hand pane) or by sending cheques to MICS at 285 Green, St. Lambert, Qc J4P 1T3 Canada. We are a US 501 c 3 non-profit and Canadian Federal Charity and can issue receipts for tax purposes for donations over $100.
The MICS team wishes you all the best for the holiday season, a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
Warm regards,
Richard Sears President
450 465 9176
