Today, I’m going a bit off course and revisiting a conversation that I had in 2008, with someone who had very little to do with the marine mammal community other than being married to one of its early members, Margaret Tavolga.  

William Tavolga ,or Bill as he liked to be called, was a teacher.  He was a professor of biology at City College in New York and also on the research staff in the Department of Animal Behavior at the American Museum of Natural History.  

He was one of the world’s leading authorities on fish sounds and is said to be one of the founding individuals of the marine bioacoustics field.  He did important studies of the mechanisms of fish sound production and acoustic communication. He did actually co-author one paper on dolphins.