Encyclopaedia of cetacean researchers: who studies cetaceans

Cetacean science is the patient work of a few dozen researchers who have devoted their lives to understanding animals that are at once familiar and out of reach. Here are portraits of the major figures who shaped contemporary cetology, their discoveries, their books, and the legacy they leave to conservation.

Roger Payne (1935-2023), the songs of whales

An American biologist and the founder of Ocean Alliance, Roger Payne is the man who brought “singing whales” to the world. In 1967, working with hydrophones off Bermuda, he documented with Scott McVay the complex musical structures of humpback whale songs. In 1970 he released the record Songs of the Humpback Whale (CRM Records, later distributed by Capitol), a worldwide commercial success with several million copies sold. The record is widely credited with feeding the Save the Whales movement that led to the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling. Payne pursued research on the acoustic culture of cetaceans throughout his life, in particular among southern right whales in Patagonia. His book Among Whales (1995) remains an accessible reference.

Whitlow Au: the master of echolocation

An American marine acoustician, long based at the Kaneohe laboratory in Hawaii working for the United States Navy, Whitlow Au is the author of The Sonar of Dolphins (Springer-Verlag, 1993), the standard reference on echolocation in odontocetes. His experiments with captive common bottlenose dolphins quantified astonishing abilities: telling apart steel spheres differing by 1 mm at a range of several metres, identifying the material of a target (copper, brass, steel) from its echo alone, and sensory crossover between vision and echolocation. His rigorous methodology and his publications laid the foundations for half a century of bioacoustics.

Hal Whitehead: sperm whales and animal culture

A British-Canadian biologist and professor at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada), Hal Whitehead is the world authority on the sperm whale. His long-term research, more than forty years of observation in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, has revealed the remarkable social organisation of the species: matrilines, groups, and cultural clans sharing coda dialects. His book Sperm Whales: Social Evolution in the Ocean (2003) remains the standard monograph. With Luke Rendell he published The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins in 2015, the definitive synthesis on culture in cetaceans. Whitehead is also one of the founders of the Cetacean Translation Initiative (CETI), which is now decoding codas by means of artificial intelligence.

Diana Reiss: self-awareness in dolphins

An American cognitive psychologist and bioacoustician, professor at Hunter College in New York, Diana Reiss published in PNAS in 2001, with Lori Marino, the demonstration that common bottlenose dolphins pass the mirror test: a demanding cognitive criterion until then documented only in great apes, elephants and magpies. Her research on acoustic communication in dolphins and her campaigning against captivity (she is a co-signatory of a manifesto for a “declaration of cetacean rights“) have done a great deal to change public perception of cetaceans. Her book The Dolphin in the Mirror (2011) recounts that path.

Janet Mann: the dolphins of Shark Bay

An American behavioural biologist, professor at Georgetown University, Janet Mann has run the Shark Bay Dolphin Research Project in Western Australia since the mid-1980s, one of the most complete long-term studies of a wild population of common bottlenose dolphins. She is the researcher who documented sponging in depth, the use of marine sponges as a foraging tool, passed on along matrilines. Her work has provided decisive evidence of animal culture in dolphins. Co-editor of Cetacean Societies (2000), she remains one of the world authorities on the social behaviour of delphinids.

Ken Balcomb (1940-2022), resident killer whales and military sonar

Founder of the Center for Whale Research in Washington State in 1976, Ken Balcomb built the most continuous annual census of a cetacean population anywhere in the world: the Southern Resident killer whales (Salish Sea), followed individual by individual for almost fifty years. He is also the man who, in 2000, documented at first hand the mass stranding of beaked whales in the Bahamas that followed a NATO sonar exercise, a founding event in the recognition of the effects of military sonar on cetaceans. His testimony and his necropsies, passed on to pathologists, set off the cascade of research that eventually led to international mitigation protocols.

Antonio Fernández: cetacean pathology

A Spanish veterinarian and pathologist, professor at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Antonio Fernández is the world expert on necropsies of stranded beaked whales. It was his team that, after the 2002 mass stranding in the Canary Islands, published in Veterinary Pathology (2005) the description of gas and fat embolic syndrome in ziphiids exposed to MFAS sonar, the biological equivalent of decompression sickness in divers. These results led to the banning of sonar around the Canary Islands in 2004, a measure that did in fact put an end to mass strandings in the area.

Philip Gingerich: the discovery of Pakicetus

An American palaeontologist, professor at the University of Michigan, Philip Gingerich discovered and described Pakicetus inachus in 1981, the first clearly identified ancestor of the cetaceans, from a fragmentary skull found in the Kuldana Formation in Pakistan. The diagnostic signature, an inner ear structure already “cetacean” in form, made it possible to link this four-legged land mammal to modern whales. His work fundamentally changed our understanding of cetacean evolution, showing that they descended from land mammals and not from marine reptiles, as had long been believed. He went on to explore the palaeontology of Pakistan and Egypt for decades, uncovering the full evolutionary sequence.

J.G.M. “Hans” Thewissen: Indohyus and the land-to-sea transition

A Dutch-American palaeontologist, professor at Northeast Ohio Medical University, Hans Thewissen discovered and described in Nature in 2007 the decisive fossil of Indohyus, a small semi-aquatic mammal 48 million years old that placed the cetaceans definitively within the artiodactyls. He is also the author of the publications on the most complete fossils of Ambulocetus, the “walking cetacean”. His book The Emergence of Whales (1998) remains the reference on the evolutionary transition. He has also carried out detailed anatomical studies of hind limb remnants in modern cetaceans, a piece of painstaking palaeontological craftsmanship.

Vincent Janik: signature whistles

A German-British biologist, professor at the University of St Andrews (Scotland), Vincent Janik is the reference on the signature whistles of common bottlenose dolphins. His work has shown, notably in a 2013 paper in PNAS with Stephanie King, that dolphins can use another individual’s signature to call it by name, the closest acoustic equivalent to a human given name documented in the animal kingdom. Janik has also led major research on vocal learning in cetaceans, an ability that is rare among non-human mammals.

Robert Pitman: Antarctic killer whales

An American marine biologist, long based at NOAA, Robert Pitman identified and characterised the different Antarctic killer whale ecotypes (types A, large B, B “pack ice”, C and D). With John Durban he published in 2012 the reference study on wave washing, the extraordinary technique by which several killer whales coordinate a wave to slide a Weddell seal off an ice floe. Pitman also documented the “moulting hypothesis” as a possible driver of the migrations of the great whales towards tropical waters, a notable paper of 2020.

Sylvia Earle: the voice of the ocean

An American oceanographer, better known by the nickname “Her Deepness”, Sylvia Earle is the great public figure of marine conservation. A former chief scientist at NOAA and founder of Mission Blue, in 1979 she set a depth record in an atmospheric diving suit (JIM suit), walking freely at 381 m depth off O’ahu (Hawaii), a record that still stands for this type of equipment. Beyond cetaceans in the strict sense, her influence on the creation of marine sanctuaries, on United States policy and on public education is immense. The documentary Mission Blue (2014) tells the story of her campaign.

Mark Johnson: the DTAG revolution

An American engineer and bioacoustician, based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and then at the University of St Andrews, Mark Johnson is the inventor of the DTAG (Digital Acoustic Recording Tag), a miniaturised sensor attached temporarily to cetaceans by suction cup. The device records simultaneously the sounds emitted and received, depth, acceleration and orientation. The DTAG transformed the study of diving and foraging behaviour in cetaceans. It is thanks to it in particular that it is now possible to “listen in” on a sperm whale hunting at 1,500 m, or to follow the breath-hold profiles of ziphiids.

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Further reading