Ocean Alliance (USA)
Ocean Alliance, founded in 1971, is one of the world’s first organisations dedicated to protecting whales. Its mission is to protect whales and their ocean environment through research, scientific collaboration, education, and the arts.
Since its foundation, Ocean Alliance has pioneered many of the benign research techniques commonplace in whale science today, including photo ID and bioacoustics.
More recently, they have gained a reputation for pioneering drone technology in whale science, which are rapidly becoming an increasingly common and powerful tool in this field. Through their SnotBot programme and, more recently, their tagging work, they have helped to push whale science/conservation into the 21st century.
In 2022/2023, the Eurofins Foundation is supporting the deployment of tags on whales using drones.
Small data tags are attached to whales via non-invasive suction cups and carry a wide range of sensors, cameras, hydrophones, and accelerometers. Over the past few decades, they have transformed humanity’s understanding of whales.
Currently, tags are deployed by research vessels that race up to a whale and deploy the tag using a long pole. This is difficult, invasive, and dangerous for both whales and scientists. Despite these challenges, tags are recognised as a crucial tool in whale science.
In 2022, Ocean Alliance demonstrated that tags could be deployed more effectively, safely, and non-invasively by using drones. Their method represents a huge step forward for tagging practices.
The Eurofins Foundation provide funds to improve this programme by developing a drone-based tagging system that is more effective, practical and widely reproducible across whale science. This will serve scientists and whale populations worldwide. In doing so, it will increase humanity’s understanding of whales and how we can best protect them in a fast-changing ocean.
These projects contribute to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
