The Whalenerd‘s Podcast

This week had an exciting announcement! Tickets for Whalenerds weekend are now on sale. You can purchase tickets for this event happening in October on our website thewhalenerds.com

Our theme for this week’s episode is vaquitas. A sad but necessary topic. We talked about some research updates and recent news in regard to the fishing free zone in Mexico. The plight of the vaquita should be a lesson for all of us. 

Reunited and it feels so good! Slater, Adam, and Katlyn were all back together for this episode. We spent a lot of time catching up and introducing a few projects that are in the works! Then we covered some new publications from this year about killer whales in the northern hemisphere. 

We had a special guest this week. Rebecca Giggs, author of the book Fathoms: The World in the Whale joined us for this episode. We talked about her book and part of her journey while writing it. The book is out now as an audiobook and hardback, but will be released on paperback on July 20th.

We were able to chat with Josh Zeman - the journalist and narrator of the new film The Loneliest Whale - The Search for 52 for this week's episode. The film is now in theaters and will be available on digital on July 16th. 

This week we had the chance to chat with one of our favorite authors Nick Pyenson! We absolutely love his book Spying on Whales. We talked about the book often in the earliest episodes of our podcast. It is a great set of stories about his work over the years as a scientist and paleontologist. Spying on Whales is available as an excellent audiobook but also in print in stores and online. Here is a link where you can purchase a physical copy of the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/556686/spying-on-whales-by-nick-pyenson/

You can also check out the Pyenson Lab and their work here: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/paleobiology/research/pyenson-lab

 

We were granted early screening access to the new film The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52. This is a story that we have touched on briefly in recent previous episodes. The film does a great job of showing how field research actually works with large whales. Whether you have heard of the legend of the 52 Hz whale or not you will learn and thing or two and enjoy the film! 

This week we had artist and conservationist Tracie Megumi as a guest. We chatted with her about her work as an artist, and her work with Dolphin Project. Art, science, conservation are all things that we really believe should go hand in hand to reach the general public about protecting our oceans, and this was one of the main focuses of our discussion with Tracie.

Episode 80 - Flues & Blues

This week Katlyn and Slater discussed fin whale / blue whale hybrids and blue whale studies from across the Pacific. There is always more to learn about these two ocean giants - including that they interbreed! Flue, a well-documented fin whale / blue whale hybrid in California and Mexico was a prominent feature of a recent paper, but they are not alone out there in the world. We also talked about our recent sightings from California and Massachusetts. 

This week we had the chance to chat with John Calambokidis from Cascadia Research Collective. It was quite a long chat, but as you can imagine, we can talk about whales all day! John is one of the large whale research rockstars in the whale world. We had so much fun talking with him about his work with blue whales and humpback whales. It was so inspiring to hear John talk about conservation and threats to large whales and what we can do to continue to protect these incredible animals.

This week our special guest was Ted Cheeseman. Ted has worked over the years as a guide, expedition leader, and trip organizer for Cheeseman's Ecology Safaris. He is also a cofounder of Happywhale, a community science project for whale photo identification. We talked all things Happywhale with Ted and had so much fun chatting with him!