Cindy Wu: You’re the founder of Cetos Research Organization. How did this get started?

Ann Zoidis: Well I have been doing research on whales in the United States on the East Coast, West Coast, Hawaii since my early 20s. I applied for a federal permit that allows you to research marine mammals in the United States and approach them. I was able to get right on a project that had captured my interest. Humpback whales have been well known for decades as the animals that produce songs. What people didn’t know is that humpback whales also create this whole other language called social sounds.

Those sounds are just like you and I talking, just whales talking to each other. The literature and all the textbooks had written that humpback whale mother and child do not talk to each other, that they don’t make sounds. I knew that was not true just from my own experience having heard those sounds. I set out to prove it and verify it to the scientific community. I was very lucky in the early days to be backed by some private donors who had seen my hard work over decades and knew that I was starting this new venture in Hawaii that started back in 2003.

I had spent 25 years working with humpback whales from the top of the water, and to get underwater with them is just really different and really amazing. There’s a whole skill set involved in finding whales underwater, not disturbing them, being able to approach them, being able to record them, without them changing what they are doing and trying to get away from you.

In the course of all of those first early years, we at Cetos Research Organization proved that humpback mothers and calves do talk to each other. Because we had spent so much time observing them we became aware of certain things that nobody has ever published and no one has ever known. But we as divers can only be in the water with the animals for a limited amount of time before they swim away. Eventually they do get to a distance where you can’t keep up with them. So we were like how can we follow them longer? Or know what’s going on at night? Are they calling out at night?

We are researchers who are dedicated and committed, but not funded by some giant organization or academic institute. We went to the drawing board and literally invented a tag that costs under $500. We think we could get under $300.That’s where the idea of the tag was born. We’re all very dedicated to not harass the animals any more than we have to. We wanted to have a non-invasive suction cup tag that doesn’t hurt them, just goes on their back for a couple of days max, and there is no impact. We started looking at tags and they cost upwards of $15,000. We are researchers who are dedicated and committed, but not funded by some giant organization or academic institute. We went to the drawing board and literally invented a tag that costs under $500. We think we could get under $300. We tested the prototypes last year in Hawaii and had great success, not only in deployment but getting data back from them. To me, as someone who’s been in the marine mammal field for 30 years, this is revolutionary. We’re able to create a device that the average researcher can go and get and not have to bankrupt their funding. They can use this tag and and deploy on any kind of marine mammal. Our goal of all of our investigations is to help preserve the animal and to teach people more about the animals. The tag is a very productive and efficient way to do that.

CW: Let’s take a step back. Tell me about the first time you encountered a humpback.

AZ: Um, gosh… I was in my early 20’s and was doing work in the Gulf of Maine. It is cold and the water is not that clear, but there are a lot of humpback whales that come there to feed. We came upon an area that is 20 miles offshore, where we know the whales hang out. I saw the animals in their natural environment doing their thing. Trying to eat and doing giant leaps through schools of fish. It just takes your breath away. Pretty quickly after that, I ended up going to Hawaii. At the time I’d only seen one or two humpbacks in Maine.

CW: How did you end up in Hawaii?

AZ: I remember my very first marine mammal conference I went to. Back then they were maybe 200–300 people and now they’re 5000 people. I remember being utterly overwhelmed at 200 people thinking “I’ll never break into this field. I’ll never get the opportunity to work with marine mammals.” I just followed a little piece of paper. In those days there were no cell phones and there was a little piece of paper on the bulletin board saying “Looking for volunteers” for a Hawaii project. I just made that phone call and was very lucky.

CW: What is special about humpbacks?

AZ: Well, humpback whales are one of the more dramatic whale species. There are over seventy different types of marine mammals, but humpback whales are very social. They’re very surface active, they do a lot of things at the surface like breaching. Believe it or not, they make eye contact. They leap. They slap their tails, they fight with each other, they feed in these giant groups. They’re very dramatic and they’re an outstanding species to work with.

CW: How do you feel when you’re away from the humpbacks?

AZ: I find that I’m missing them. I didn’t have the funding to go this year to do my research. There is something about the majestic presence of these animals. That are clearly very intelligent, clearly have a whole social evolution of their own where they interact. Not to be cliche, it is kind of an honor to get to work with them and see these amazing animals that travel thousands and thousands of miles. Even though so much is known about them, there’s still a lot we don’t know. That’s what always captures my interest.

CW: Let’s talk more about the project that you’re working on now. Tell me more about your team.

AZ: I’ve been very lucky in that I have a dedicated group of volunteers, who share my passion and excitement about working with humpback whales. I have several young women in their 30s who are budding marine mammal scientists in their own right. These are people I can really trust and rely on for their sophisticated technical knowledge. No one person can do everything, so I do need someone who can rig my cameras, figure out the sound capturing, etcetera. At this point some of us have worked together for decades. We’re old friends, so I can make a phone call and say to my friends, “We’re going to go to Hawaii. Here’s what we need.” People really find the time to help and put the equipment together. Some of the women who’ve helped me are Kate Lomac-McNair, Maren Anderson, Kerri Seger, among others. Those are three of the core people who have really stuck with me.

CW: How did you learn all these things?

AZ: Some of it I learned in my 20’s when I participated in field projects. They weren’t always on whales. At first I did some terrestrial mammal work on bears. Every field project has a certain level of logistics. I am a very organized and detailed person by nature. In fact, my nickname that I was given on my projects was Captain Detail. I’d be the one saying, “Did you remember that clipboard? And that pen? And that whatever?” Honestly, it takes that level of attention to keep running any kind of project. I think I had a natural aptitude for it and plus I’m very outgoing and communicative. I always try to start my meetings with the excitement and passion in what we are about to do. It takes commitment. You’re out at sea. You’re salty. You’re tired. It is long days but the rewards are just profound for the kind of work we do. To see the kind of things we get to see is just incredible. You might have a couple hours where nothing is happening. Then, all of a sudden you’ll see this pandemonium of whales fighting each other, and crashing around and trying to get to the female to mate with her.

CW: What does an average day at sea look like?

AZ: We are up by 6:30 or 6:45. There’s just getting your breakfast, getting lunches made, getting all the equipment packed in the van, a lot of early morning chaos, and then we’re on the water by 8:00. Even though sometimes we could get out on water earlier, we need to work underwater and photograph, so we have to have enough overhead light. We have to wait for the sun to be up high enough to penetrate the water column. We depart out of a harbor in Maui. Hawaii is a great place to work with whales because the water is so clear and so accessible. It doesn’t take long in the winter to find a humpback whale in Hawaii. We spend some time observing the animals prior to approaching them just to make sure they’re not skittish. Then we’ll just go from group to group. We’ll take a lunch break and then we’ll go back again from group to group. When we’re trying to tag animals what we learned is we would spend our mornings focusing on the tagging effort. And if we didn’t get a tag on by 1 o’clock in the afternoon we would switch gears and do more underwater filming. The reason is once you get the tag on you spend the entire day until night fall tracking those animals and staying close to them. When the animals surfaces, you get these beats and that’s how you track them, so we do that as long as we can. Then we go home at night, and cook dinner and have lots of fun conversations but also work the data all evening. It’s quite a long and arduous day, but it’s so rewarding and it’s self-generating fun. When the tag has been on overnight, we would get up crack of dawn and go to a very high vantage point on the shore and try and pick up the telemetry signal, which is a beep, basically, that comes off the antenna on the tag. Even though you’re a couple miles away from the water, you get what’s called a “fix”. We note that and we’d jump down to the harbor, jump in the boats, go out and find those whales again. We had a pretty good success rate of finding the whales and tags and following.

CW: Sounds incredible. For this new project how much money do you need?

AZ: We want $6,000 for the development of the tag. This project is very targeted just to support the research and development of this tag, which is a novel device. There are additional costs involved with everything, with the boat, with the lodging, with the food, with your camera equipment, with your data downloads, etcetera.

CW: What is unique about this tag?

AZ: What’s really unique about the tag is people for the last two decades have had these very sophisticated electronic tags that are really great at tracking the whales, monitoring their dives, capturing their sounds. These devices cost upwards of $15,000. That was prohibitive for us financially. We were talking about how to track a diver and the diver’s location in relation to the whale. We wanted to be able to determine how the whales react depending on where the diver is. Someone said “Why don’t we put the GPS watch on the diver’s mask?” We were sort of thinking about that and all of a sudden I went, “Well, if we can put it on a diver’s mask why can’t we put it on the whale and just track the whale?” It was just one of those brainstorms. Then the conversation became about how do you redesign a watch that’s designed to go around a human wrist onto the back of a giant animal that swims underwater most of the time. We borrowed the technology of the other tags, of a giant suction cup the size of your fist which has a scooped out hollow surface where you embed the electronics. We said let’s get the same old suction cup, but put the watch in there. One of our scientists is a surfer, and he’s like, “Why don’t we use surfboard resin?” That was a great idea and very inexpensive. We then needed a little flotation device, because when they do come off the whale, you want to be able to capture it. That’s the most confounding part of any type of tagging technology. You spend a lot of time trying to get the device on the animal, chasing the animal, and not crossing that fine line between not harassing it but getting close enough to put this device on it. And then you get that device on the animal, and you’re jumping around feeling so successful, and then you’re like hold on I have to get that device back, because all my data is living inside that device.

To me as a scientist, it was a really interesting dilemma. You have to have the proper flotation device to make sure the tracking device doesn’t sink. We came up with this very basic idea of using cork which floats. None of us are engineers, but we built this device and put a little antenna on it. We just cobbled it together and it worked.

CW: That is really awesome. On your campaign it says if someone gives over $1,500 you’re allowing them to come on the boat in Hawaii for one day. Can you tell us more?

AZ: Yes, that is true.

If someone helped us with a generous contribution that would help us get into the field, that person in my mind deserves the opportunity to come on the vessel, see what we do, and get to see these animals really close. One the advantages to working under a permit, such as the one I have is you get to approach the animals closer than the federal law allows. It is a very different thing to see a sixty foot animal from a few feet away then it is to see it from a hundred meters away. I’ve been on boats with people who are seeing their whales for the first time and it is a wonderful thing. I’d be happy to provide that opportunity to someone who in turn was providing me the opportunity to get out in the field again.

CW: Now I want to save up $1,500 to come with you. To wrap this up I have two last questions. What advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?

AZ: Remember to enjoy the good times and not just focus on the hard work. As I get older I realize how fortunate I’ve been to have these encounters with these wild animals. During the course of my work as a person in charge of so much I often have a lot on my mind. My advice would be to tell myself to relax and enjoy the process: as you’re working on organizing and getting everything together and getting everybody awake and getting out on the boat and watching for the weather and all those things that it takes to be out at sea. I’d tell myself to be reflective and have the gratitude of how lucky we are to not just be doing ordinary things.

CW: That’s a great piece of advice. Last one, when you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?

AZ: Well, it’s really funny because I always would say that I wanted to work with marine mammals. And to this day I don’t know where that came from. Sometimes I’ve asked myself why do I want to be out here on these rocking boats in this bad weather, exposed to the elements? There’s a poem by Robert Service, who is a poet who used to write about traveling in the Arctic and in the cold weather.

When you are compelled to be in the wilderness you are just compelled. I have always been compelled to work with marine mammals.