Ocean Alliance

Ocean Alliance, Inc., is a 501(c)3 organization founded in 1971 as one of the world's first organizations dedicated to protecting cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises). The organization is headquartered in the iconic Tarr & Wonson Paint Manufactory building in Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA. Ocean Alliance's mission is to protect whales and their ocean environment through research, scientific collaboration, education, and the arts. Today, they are best known for utilizing drone technology to advance whale science, particularly through their SnotBot® program .

History

Ocean Alliance was founded in 1971 by whale biologist Dr. Roger Payne, with the purpose of saving the great whales from the very real extinction risk which commercial whaling posed at the time. Payne, along with colleague Scott McVay, became famous for the discovery that humpback whales sing songs, a discovery which made him an influential figure in the worldwide campaign to end commercial whaling.

Since its founding under Payne, and later under the stewardship of current CEO Dr. Iain Kerr, Ocean Alliance has been an important group in the worldwide effort to research and protect whales.

They are well-respected for developing benign research techniques, helping to develop several key research tools for studying whales that are still in use today, such as photo-identification and bio-acoustics . Many of their exploits have brought them closely into the public eye, leading Payne to describe the group as "''the group you don’t know you know''".

During the 1990s, Ocean Alliance established that the way to save whales would be to show them to the world, and they became involved in over forty documentaries including ''In the Company of Whales'' and the IMAX film ''Whales''.

In the late 1990s, Ocean Alliance became increasingly concerned about pollution in our oceans, and how little was being done to study this pollution and bring it to light. From 2000–2005, under the leadership of CEO Dr. Iain Kerr, Ocean Alliance launched the Voyage of the Odyssey, which provided the first ever global data set on pollution in the oceans. This project lasted five years and spanned the entire planet. In the executive summary of the program, Roger Payne states that, "The Voyage of the Odyssey has proven irrefutably that ocean life is becoming polluted to unacceptable levels by metals and human-made contaminants."

In 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, releasing approximately 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In response, Ocean Alliance spent five years in the Gulf of Mexico, studying the impacts of the oil spill on marine life. This work culminated in the publication of dozens of academic papers and reports .

In 2013, Ocean Alliance CEO Dr. Iain Kerr recognised an emerging technology that could hold the key to the future of whale research and conservation: drones. This marked a shift in Ocean Alliance’s approach to whale conservation, as they focused their efforts on facilitating and accelerating the use of drones in whale science. This was carried out under the belief that drones have great potential in whale science and conservation.

Since then, drones have become increasingly common tools in whale science. Ocean Alliance’s SnotBot program, and more recently their tagging program, have been at the forefront of this drone emergence .

Accomplishments

• 1967: Ocean Alliance founder and president Dr. Roger Payne discovered, along with Scott McVay, that humpback whales sing songs. This was an important hallmark of the Save the Whales movement.

• 1970s: Payne and Ocean Alliance demonstrated mathematically that the songs of Blue whales and Fin whales are audible across entire ocean basins. The recent corroboration of this theory may explain, for the first time, why these species have no known breeding grounds.

• 1970s: Payne and Ocean Alliance are instrumental in establishing an 860 square mile whale park (Golfo San Jose), off Peninsula Valdes in southern Argentina-an important breeding ground for endangered Southern right whales. This led to a permanent research program being set up, which is now the longest continuously running study on baleen whales (the program entered its 44th year in 2013). Since 1996 the program has been run in conjunction with the Instituto de Conservación de Ballenas.

• 1970s: Ocean Alliance scientists pioneer many of the benign research techniques now commonly used worldwide to study free-ranging whales.

• 1979, ''National Geographic'' magazine published an article by Roger Payne which includes a sound sheet of his ‘''Songs of the Humpback Whale''’.

• 1984–1989: Payne is selected for a 'Genius Grant' through the MacArthur Fellows Program.

• 1990's–Present: An education drive is implemented by CEO Iain Kerr to support Ocean Alliance's programs. This included partnerships with schools in Massachusetts developing an elementary whale study curriculum ‘Looking at Whales’, the Cetacean Education Through Awareness (CETA) program in Gloucester, Massachusetts; the ‘Education Today’ program developed in partnership with the Discovery Channel, the Pacific Life WHALE Education program with various schools across the United States and the Ocean Encounters multimedia education program.

• 1990's–Present: Ocean Alliance are involved in the production of over 40 documentaries studying whales, including 'In the Company of Whales' and the IMAX film ''Whales''. Their research vessel Odyssey has been featured on PBS, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, BBC
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