Ocean Alliance, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1971 as one of the world's first organizations dedicated to cetacean (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) conservation. The organization is headquartered in the iconic Tarr & Wonson Paint Manufactory building in Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA. Ocean Alliance's mission is to protect whales and their ocean environment through research, scientific collaboration, education, and the arts. They use drone technology to advance whale science, particularly through their SnotBot® program.
History Ocean Alliance was founded in 1971 by whale biologist Roger Payne, with the purpose of saving the great whales from the extinction risk posed by commercial whaling. Payne, along with colleague Scott McVay, discovered that humpback whales sing songs, which made him an influential figure in the worldwide campaign to end commercial whaling. Since its founding under Payne, and later under the stewardship of CEO Iain Kerr, Ocean Alliance has been an important group in the worldwide effort to research and protect whales. They developed benign research techniques, helping to develop several key research tools for studying whales that are still in use, such as photo-identification and bio-acoustics. Many of their exploits have brought them into the public eye, leading Payne to describe the group as "the group you don't know you know". During the 1990s, Ocean Alliance established that whales could be saved by publicizing them to the world, and they became involved in over forty documentaries including In the Company of Whales and the IMAX film Whales. In the late 1990s, Ocean Alliance became increasingly concerned about pollution in our oceans, and how little was being done to study this pollution and bring it to light. From 2000 to 2005, under the leadership of Iain Kerr, Ocean Alliance launched the Voyage of the Odyssey, which provided the first global data set on ocean pollution. This project lasted five years and spanned the entire planet. In its executive summary, Roger Payne stated that, "The Voyage of the Odyssey has proven irrefutably that ocean life is becoming polluted to unacceptable levels by metals and human-made contaminants." In 2010 the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, releasing approximately 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In response, Ocean Alliance spent five years in the Gulf of Mexico, studying the impacts of the oil spill on marine life. This work culminated in the publication of dozens of academic papers and reports. In 2013, Kerr recognized an emerging technology that could hold the key to the future of whale research and conservation: drones. This marked a shift in Ocean Alliance's approach to whale conservation, as they focused their efforts on facilitating and accelerating the use of drones in whale science. This was carried out under the belief that drones have great potential in whale science and conservation. Since then, drones have become increasingly common tools in whale science. Ocean Alliance's SnotBot program, and more recently their tagging program, have been at the forefront of this drone emergence.
Accomplishments
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