Episode 1: Happywhale

Wild For Change

Today on the Wild For Change Podcast, we will be speaking with Ted Cheeseman, co-founder of Happywhale.

Happywhale was created in 2015, when Ted Cheeseman’s decades long expeditions to the Antarctic and the island of South Georgia demonstrated where whales were once prevalent, sightings of whales were rare. This was due to hundreds of years of this area being the center of the whaling industry.

A global whaling moratorium was established in 1982 to preserve what was left of the global whale population. But the recovery of whale populations took many years and it wasn’t until 2011, that whale populations began to recover.

Happywhale created a web enabled technology that would help to track whales globally. Its mission is to improve global understanding and awareness of marine life by inviting people to become engaged in marine mammal research and conservation using collaborative scientific tools.

The first I learned of Happywhale was when I was vacationing in Cabo San Lucas and signed up for an eco-whale watching tour. The tour guide spoke about submitting photos of whales that I saw while on the tour to Happwhale in order to track the whales during their migration to support Happywhale’s mission of marine mammal conservation.

I was so impressed to learn that people can actually help and support the scientific community in whale conservation just by submitting a photo!

This podcast will bring awareness of whale population decline and certain whale population recovery, effects of climate change and human encroachment in whale territories, what to look for when going on a whale watching tour, and how citizens can help support whale conservation.

To learn more about Happywhale, click on the link below:

https://happywhale.com/home

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