American Cetacean Society

UPCOMING SPEAKER EVENT

VIA ZOOM WITH A WATCH PARTY AT PLNU

Speaker: Dr. Ted Cheeseman

North Pacific humpback whale conservation science through the stories of five whales with Happywhale

Ted will explore the life histories of five individual humpback whales including Big Mama and her family of the Salish Sea, Fran and her daughter of California, and Old Timer of Alaska, to illustrate modern marine conservation science. These stories show how great an impact every contributor to citizen science has in helping us understand and protect great whales and our oceans, while revealing insights into their unique culture and biology.

Description: Dr. Ted Cheeseman is a research fellow at the University of California Santa Cruz and co-founder and director of Happywhale, a research collaboration and citizen science platform that uses AI-powered image recognition to track individual whales globally. He completed his PhD in Marine Science at Southern Cross University, Australia, where his widely collaborative work on North Pacific humpback whale populations leveraged AI technology to identify nearly every living whale in the region—revealing that one-third of Hawaiʻi’s humpback population was lost following a three-year marine heatwave. In 2026, Happywhale won the UN’s AI for Good Impact Award, recognizing outstanding an contribution to the planet and society.

Born into a family of biologists and expedition leaders, Ted led Antarctic expeditions for 30 years before pivoting to marine science. His research has been published in over 50 peer-reviewed papers, and he has contributed to international collaborations spanning all the world’s oceans. Through Happywhale, he aims to open a door into understanding the ocean realm by making marine science accessible, fun, and a thousand times more efficient than analog techniques of old. When not studying whales, Ted is happiest anywhere wild, especially in surf, snow, and mountains.

Wednesday, Sept 9, 2026, 7:00 PM PDT – In person at PLNU and on Zoom