Dr. Roger Payne was an American scientist who is probably best known for his work with whales.  His career spanned more than fifty years and was largely spent in the pursuit of understanding whale song and promoting whale conservation.

Ken Balcomb was an American scientist who is probably best known for his work with killer whales.  His passion for whales was evident through out his life and his advocacy for the whales food, salmon, played an important part in trying to restore an out of balance ecosystem.  

Dr. Sidney Holt was a British biologist whose specialty, actually his passion was, saving large whales. He is probably best known for his conservation work with the International Whaling Commission once he realized that the current whaling quota structure was driving whale populations toward extinction.  Focusing his attention and his considerable mathematical prowess to protect and conserve large whale species, Dr. Holt provided scientific support to numerous non-governmental organizations that were working to stem the tide of whale kills and forcing whaling nations to only hunt in their own economic zones.  He used his scientific, communication, and diplomatic skills to turn the IWC from pro-hunting to a conservation body, a process that took decades of dedication.

Today, we are going off topic a bit to listen to a conversation that I was privileged enough to have a few years ago, in 2015. Dr. Walter Munk, the longest serving oceanographer in the United States, and perhaps the world, the one-time Secretary of the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations Oceanography, and Chair of the world-famous Scripps Institution of Oceanography, kindly agreed to meet with me and granted me one and a half hours, out of his still-busy schedule, for a video interview.  We are assisted with the interview by his friend Dr. Peter Lamb.

Dr. Perrin is best known for his work in documenting the unsustainable mortality of hundreds of thousands of dolphins per year in the tuna purse-seine fishery of the eastern tropical Pacific. His tenure in the field spanned nearly fifty years and he was one of the scientists whose work was responsible for implementing the marine mammal protection act.

I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to interview Sam for a couple of hours at the Navy dolphin facility in San Diego.  We sat outside on the floats of the dolphin pens with Coronado air base in the background while training ops were being conducted.  It’s possible you’ll hear some extraneous sounds from the jets and helicopters in addition to the dolphin blows.  Let’s listen to what Sam had to say about his career.

Whit talks about his perspectives of the marine mammal field and how he got there.  Beginning with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, spending time in the Air Force, and finally a full career in marine bioacoustics.  His take, "Its ok to switch gears". 

In 2010 I had the opportunity to meet and conduct a video interview with Joe Geraci. Dr. Geraci was a scientist, a professor, a veterinarian, and one of the leading experts in marine mammal medicine.  In addition to this, he was a strong proponent of educating the public about sea life and the challenges affecting it.  He spent four decades in field work, science, medicine, and teaching people how to respect animals and the environment.  In this podcast are a few soundbites from a brilliant decades long career ... Enjoy!

Dr. Kuczaj was a professor at Southern Mississippi University and director of the marine mammal behavior and cognition laboratory.

In these excerpts he shares some thoughts and comments about his career and research while in the field.  

We explore a conversation that John Anderson had with Hardy Jones, in 2012.  Hardy planned a career as a journalist after graduating college, but as life would have it, something else caught his interest.  With his college degree in hand and a couple of journalism jobs under his belt, Hardy heard about a pod of spotted dolphins that visited and interacted with a team of treasure salvage divers working in the Bahamas.  Hardy released his first conservation film on dolphins in 1979.  This film, "Dolphin" helped to sway the tuna industry away from using dolphins as indicators and setting their nets on them.  Subsequently, he produced 76 additional conservation films and one book during his career.