NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY MARCH 2001

FIRST YEAR OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
..............
At the end of 2000 it seemed to be rather difficult to find sponsorship for the project. Maybe because the time for the beginning of the project is approaching, or because it is always easier to negociate about sponsorship when the budget year still is young, but things seem to go a little aesier now.
We are negociating with the importer of some rubber boats,we are negociating about supply of fuel for Celina with an oil company, and DISCOVERY NETWORKS NORDIC has granted us a Genoa sail from MP-sejl and an ADOPT A DOLPHIN plus general CAMPAIGN on ANIMAL PLANET. Suddenly, so it seems, things are beginning to move into the right direction.

NEW MEMBERS
Our latest active member, cand. scient biol. Marianne H. Rasmussen, who conducted some research with whitebeaks on Island in 98/99 turned out to be a real active for Viking Explorer and we are greating her wellcome onbord Viking Explorers research team and the whitebeak project.

CAMPAIGNS
In order to reach a broader public we are soon beginning to look for new members who will have the task to build a PR-department for Viking Explorer. So if You know somebody with or under relevant aducation, biologists, psychologists, chemists, but also people with skills in marketing, multimedia etc.. make them get aquainted with us, please.

PHOTO-IDs and IDENTIFICATION OF DERMAL DISEASE SYMPTOMS MAYBE POSSIBLE AS A NEW MODULE OF THE WHITEBEAK PROJECT.
Researchers from Morey Firth have successfully worked with using the photo materials from Photo-IDs to identify 16 different symptoms of dermal diseases. We have not yet found out how it is done, but we are trying to contact researchers from Morey Firth to find out some details.
Eventually the identification of dermal disease symptoms from photo material is only possible when it is done together with the sampling of biopsies, which eventually would be possible to work on when we know more about the exact techniques our partners from D.M.U. want to use. Under any circumstance we beleve this could be an interesting module to be added to our research program, and we will inform You when new developments allow us to tell You more about this.

With best regards

Irina Lehmann
Secretary

ADOPT A WHITEBEAKED DOLPHIN............................ A campaign by ANIMAL PLANET and Viking Explorer.

Paralel with the beginning of the sailing season for the whitebeaked dolphin project, Viking Explorer and ANIMAL PLANET will start an adoption campaign.

Please look at our PHOTO page and on ANIMAL PLANET from June 2001, and help us help the WHITEBEAKES in the North Sea.

Best regards


Chris Lytken
Chairman