Ocean Alliance
Description
Ocean Alliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of whales and their marine environment.
It was founded in 1971 by whale biologist Roger Payne, one of the world’s first organizations set up for cetacean conservation, at a time when commercial whaling was pushing many whale populations toward extinction. Payne and colleague Scott McVay’s discovery that humpback whales sing songs helped drive the global campaign against commercial whaling.
Ocean Alliance works through scientific research, collaboration with universities, advocacy groups and government bodies, education, and the arts to advance whale science and conservation. It has run long-term studies such as the Patagonia right whale program, conducted the multi-year Voyage of the Odyssey to document ocean pollution, and studied the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on whales in the Gulf of Mexico. More recently it has pioneered the use of drones in whale research through its SnotBot program, collecting samples from whale blow to learn about their health.
The organization is headquartered in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the former Tarr and Wonson Paint Manufactory building, and has worked in more than thirty countries worldwide.
Latest news
Ocean Alliance’s SnotBot® team assisted Cascadia Research in drone deploying biologging tags on Sounder Gray Whales in Puget Sound for a second consecutive year. This work is led by Research Biologist John Calambokidis from Cascadia Research and Stanford PhD student Hannah Clayton. The North...
19 Apr 2024
SnotBot goes tagging in Hawaii
Robotics Manager Chris Zadra and I headed off to Hawai’i on February 1 to work with Ed Lyman’s whale disentanglement team to trial and discuss new drone-based methods in support of disentangling large whales. Iain with a line-cutting hook. This was our second year working with Ed and his amazing...
19 Mar 2024
Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located in West Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, while sharing maritime borders with...
4 Dec 2023
Looking for blue whales in Baja
Dear Friends, Well, Baja 2023 was a tough one. We always set ourselves a high bar, and we got the job done. But it wasn’t easy. We had three overall goals: To conduct focal follows of blue and fin whales. (This this entailed tagging a whale, collecting multiple Snot samples from it, and...
6 Jun 2023
Dear Friends, Our trip to Maui has been incredibly productive and we still have five days left. Day one was set up and planning. In the morning we sat down with Ed Lyman and the Resource Protection and Monitoring Team with the Hawaiian Island Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. In the...
30 Mar 2023
Red tide confirmed in dead southern right whales in Argentina
At the end of September, Insituto de Conservación de Ballenas, our partners in the Southern Right Whale Research project, began seeing reports of dead southern right whales in Golfo Nuevo, Península Valdés. Between September 24 and October 11, 30 dead right whales were recorded. Scientists...
8 Nov 2022
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