Join us for Cetacean Sessions #4 on Thursday, May 13th at 4:00 pm PT. In this session we will take a closer look at the paper "Adaptation of sperm whales to open-boat whalers: rapid social learning on a large scale?" recently published in Biology Letters with its lead author, Hal Whitehead. As one of the  foremost authorities on culture in whale and dolphin societies, we will also discuss this topic with Hal while taking live Q&A from the audience.

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Cetacean Sessions is a bi-weekly webinar series where we discuss impactful recently published scientific research on cetaceans with those conducting it around the world. Cetacean Sessions is informal, educational, interactive and geared towards those working with or interested in cetaceans. You can register for sessions and follow our channel for free with no account creation necessary.

Hal Whitehead is a University Research Professor in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His work is principally on the behaviour, social structure, population biology and conservation of sperm whales, techniques of studying social structure, and more general questions about social structure in mammals and cultural evolution. Hal has authored many publications about cetaceans including several books such as “Analyzing Animal Societies” and The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins”.

Bay Cetology enables conservation and understanding of cetacean populations that are data deficient or threatened by climate change and human development. Our marine biologists and research technicians use various expertise to conduct field studies, analyze data, and communicate findings. Bay Cetology was founded by Jared Towers in 2017 and is based out of Alert Bay (Home of the Killer Whale) in the unceded traditional territory of the 'Namgis First Nation in British Columbia, Canada. See more about our previous work and current projects at https://baycetology.org

Cetacean Session #4