this was certainly an unusual wake up call, but i also found myself in an unusual place, sailing through the heart of southeast alaska with lindblad expeditions. sleep would have to wait — i was here for adventure after all and whale sightings are a once-in-a-lifetime experience. furiously matting my bedhead, i donned a rain jacket and hurried up to the deck. 

i was struck by a sharp wind and a spray of mist as i opened the door to the outside world. i eagerly scanned the horizon and, after a brief moment, was greeted by half a dozen whale tails, seemingly waving at me as they dove back beneath the water’s surface. they didn’t stay under for long, however. it was feeding time and the whales were evidently hungry. 

up and down they went, smooth arched backs diving beneath the surface, each flourishing tail a sight to behold. shiny black blubber, flowing like a heart shaped fan, glistened in the morning light and sent droplets of water rippling through the air. 

i grabbed my camera, hoping to catch a whale fully breaching, but it was those tails that kept appearing in my viewfinder. at first, i found myself frustrated at my inability to photograph anything more than that last bit of whale disappearing into the water. but i soon learned that there was more to these tails (and thus this tale) than it seemed.

more than a fluke

on the deck, shannon malone, the ship’s naturalist and undersea specialist explained that photographing these whales, specifically their tails, could actually be a huge benefit to science. it turns out researchers and scientists can learn a lot just by looking at this small section of the animal. 

“what we’re trying to do is learn about the whales as much as we can without altering their behavior,” malone said. the fluke [the two lobes of a whale’s tail] is really like seeing their face. so you see the same individuals, then you start to know other parts of them.”

yes, believe it or not, a whale’s tail is like a fingerprint, each wholly unique to the individual. the shapes of tails vary widely among species and scarring from broken off barnacles and/or predation further distinguishes one whale from the next. by identifying specific whales, scientists can then track them and study migration and behavioral patterns as well as their life histories.

“the way that they [scientists] figured out that those markings mattered, was actually just random happenstance,” malone said. she explained that in the 1960’s researchers from hawaii met with a high school science teacher from juneau and compared whale photos. previously, the researchers in hawaii were unsure of where the humpbacks were going to migrate and thought this might be the missing link. “they sat down and just started playing the game of like, mix and match with their pictures and realized ‘wow, these are the same.’ that’s how it all began,” malone said.

from tails to happywhale

these days it’s no longer necessary to identify whales by hand. back in 2015, ted cheeseman, a conservation biologist, founded happywhale, a website that utilizes a custom-made algorithm to analyze and identify humpback whales through photo comparisons.

just as detectives find fingerprint matches by analyzing ridges of a finger pad and comparing them to an existing database, happywhale’s algorithm matches newly uploaded fluke photos with previously uploaded photos to find matches. from there, scientists, researchers, and the public can find information on the whales they have identified, such as their gender and where they previously have been spotted. 

“the importance of it is only as important as it is to understand the fate of our oceans, which as we are seeing today, the health of human societies is quite dependent upon,” cheeseman said. “this is basically another lens we have … that has provided effectively a tool to be able to see in near real time how marine conditions are faring.”

a unique aspect of happywhale is that anyone can upload photos and anyone can access the information on these whales found on the site. the result is a diverse community of citizen scientists, researchers, and environmentalists working in tandem to achieve a variety of goals.

for the casual uploader, happywhale provides the opportunity to track “your” whale and even name it, if you are the first to discover it. for the researchers, it provides unprecedented access to a vast trove of information on a specific species. with an ever-growing database of more than 500,000 submitted photos and 200,000-plus identified encounters, the knowledge of these majestic creatures will continue to expand as well. 

“i see the whole thing as being kind of equal parts a research tool, a public education tool, and a public experience,” cheeseman said. 

a large portion of uploads actually come from tourism. i witnessed this first-hand as some of the naturalists aboard the ship spent hours logging dozens of fluke photos they had taken in the morning. 

when i later sat down with malone she explained that having naturalists like herself, as well as tourists, contribute to happywhale’s database saves research groups a lot of time, effort, and money. in addition to whale identification, the website also offers similar algorithms to analyze and track everything from penguins to sea otters.

“if we just relied on the researchers to gather the information about whales, we would have maybe a handful of people working. but with citizen science, you’re now getting to use the resources of thousands of people,” malone said. “like with any science, the more data points we have, the more accurately we can speak about the population as a whole. it’s not only adding to the science, but it’s adding to the group of stewards for the environment by informing people about this.”

cheeseman agreed, emphasizing how happywhale can serve as a tool for people from all walks of life.

“what’s most powerful is this becomes a tool for the guides, folks like shannon, to have more resources so that they can do their job with science support,” he said. “at the end of the day, what this is trying to do is help people understand. my goal is not at all to get every one of those folks to submit, it’s really more to have a few people turn on and stay turned on.”

the ship sails on

by the end of the expedition, i was hooked by happywhale’s mission. scanning their website, it’s easy to see the appeal and how powerful a tool it can be. a quick search allowed me to find the whales the naturalist had identified on our expedition. i then clicked on another upload from alaska and found other humpback whales, decades old, spotted as far as hawaii. 

unfortunately, i never got any close-up shots on my expedition to submit to happywhale. still, the memory of my adventure lives on thanks to the uploads of so many others. even having now left alaska, i am confident this tale will continue.

––

editor’s note: lindblad expeditions, our planet forward storyfest competition partner, made this series possible by providing winners with an experiential learning opportunity aboard one of their ships. all editorial content is created independently. we thank lindblad expeditions for their continued support of our project. read all the stories from the expedition in our astonishing alaska series.

national geographic explorer arati kumar-rao is on a mission to document what she calls “the slow violence of climate change” through visual storytelling over time. in this keynote presentation, she transports us to the flooded banks of the ganges river through photography and verse, and asks us to consider the responsibility we bear as chroniclers of the land in the midst of continuing crisis.

afterward, arati engages in a virtual q&a with students. learn more about her work on her website.

q: many people cringe at the idea of parasitic insects. what is it about parasites that interest you so much?

a: i think what i find so interesting about parasites is the fact that they challenge my assumptions about how the natural world works. i learned about biology, i learned about all these kinds of ecological interactions; predator and prey, and how animals evolve, defenses against predation, or competition. all of that sort of fits into a framework of how i understand the world. and these parasites come along and then give examples of things that don’t really fit that framework, and all of a sudden i realized wait a minute, the level of complexity that’s possible in nature is far beyond what i thought was possible. it’s not like i thought i knew everything about nature ahead of time. but you feel confident in saying ‘yeah, i see this hawk chasing after a squirrel. that fits into what i know of how the world works.’ and then you read or hear about how these parasites are manipulating their host, and you think that makes no sense. and i found that really interesting. it’s so novel; it’s so interesting to me.

q: how do you think photography can be used as a form of environmental communication and why might this be more effective than, say, a scientific paper?

a: photography has this advantage because we are very much visually oriented creatures. so much of our biology is based around the fact that we have such good vision. i think our brains are already well-built to take in imagery; it’s automatically stimulating for us. so, you sort of have this built-in advantage. in that sense, i think it takes a lot less effort to grab somebody’s attention. now, when it comes to changing somebody’s worldview, and inspiring their curiosity, and all those things, it takes more than just the image to do that. it takes a story, it takes context, and a better understanding of what your audience’s assumptions are. a photograph by itself can’t do all that, but it’s an amazing way into somebody’s attention. i didn’t really recognize that until i was having a conversation with my editor over that story, and he really defined my objective for that story. like, you’re not going to teach everybody about every step of this process. the magazine is only going to give you one page, one photograph. and your job is to get people to stop flipping through the magazine and read the caption. and i’ve really seen that as what the role of photography is more broadly. you can’t necessarily give somebody an entire biology lesson with a single photograph. but you can get them to be at least interested to learn about it on their own, or to listen to you talk, or to read the paper or read the article. i just think it’s this window into a larger subject.

q: in your talk “beauty and the bizarre,” you talk about photographing the emerald wasp. could you talk a bit about their relationship with cockroaches and the possible relation to parkinson’s disease? what exactly does the emerald wasp do?

a: the emerald cockroach wasp, or the emerald jewel wasp (another common name it’s known by) hunts cockroaches. but these cockroaches are larger than it, like many times. so rather than try to overpower it or kill the cockroach, it has figured out a way to immobilize its prey. it does that by leading its stinger into the back of the cockroach’s head. its stinger has special sensors that can actually detect where in the brain its stinger is, and it finds the part of the brain that is responsible for the motivation for movement in the cockroach. it then injects a venom cocktail that disrupts the dopamine activity of that part of the brain. and that’s a general way of describing a process that’s actually more complex than i understand. i know that it involves something that disrupts the dopamine activity. what that means is this cockroach can still move, but it can no longer decide to move on its own. so the wasp removes its stinger, and then it grabs the cockroach by an antenna, and by pulling on the antenna, that stimulates the cockroach to move. but if it lets go of the antenna, the cockroach can’t run away. so it’s this way of getting around the fact that its prey is too large. but it also doesn’t want to kill the prey because it’s not going to eat it itself, it’s going to actually feed it to its babies. it’s going to bury it alive with a single egg that can feed on this living cockroach that stays fresh, because it’s not dead.

so i visited the scientist frederic libersat in israel who studies the action of this venom. i went to the lab, and i photographed this. i had done some research on this biology, but i didn’t realize until after when i saw that professor give a lecture at a conference where he said “you know, we’re actually working with parkinson’s researchers to try and develop a better treatment for this disease by studying the wasp.” and that’s because the dopamine-disrupting activity of this venom has a similar mechanism to how parkinson’s works in humans. and what i don’t understand is how close that gap is. so on the one hand, it’s insane that our own brains and cockroaches brains share similar neurotransmitters. it kind of points to the common building blocks of all of the animal world, and the biological world more broadly. i don’t know how far along that collaboration is, or what the near-term implications are. i don’t know that they’re necessarily going to market with a new drug based on this, but i think the idea that they can think about the activity of this disease and the system from a mental perspective. it’s almost like a model system where the activity of this neurotransmitter and the chemistry of the cockroach’s brain is far simpler in terms of its effects on the cockroach’s behavior than our own super complicated brain and super complicated disease. so it’s a way to simplify a system and think about how to approach the much more complicated problem.

q: what’s next for you?

a: for the immediate, i’m very much trying to organize my life and take a break. but i am in the beginnings of my next project on jellyfish and using that as an example for how to think about complexity in the biological world. parasites is another example of this; it’s creatures that have something to teach us about how the world works. everybody knows about jellyfish, but even i’m just scratching the surface of how intricate and beautiful and complicated they are. to look at this thing that just looks like a bag of goo and to understand how it sees the world and has survived longer than almost any other animal on the planet, through mass extinctions. this is a cool thing that we could probably learn something from. so that’ll be the next project for me.

our storyfest winners were dazzled by the ecosystems, the humpback and killer whales, bald eagles, sea lions and sea otters, brown bears and porcupines they saw, studied, and photographed. compelling characters in amazing stories.

our students touched time as they visited towering glaciers and embraced centuries-old sitka spruces. they considered their human footprint as they heard about dwindling fisheries and witnessed the calving of the glaciers. they pondered their place on the planet as they explored remote settlements and learned about tlingit culture and other native peoples.

our planet forward students shot video, took pictures, interviewed naturalists and scientists aboard ship, wrote and produced. they dove into their stories. you’ll start seeing them in the next couple of weeks.

professor dr. imani cheers guided them through digital production techniques and social media. planet forward board member michael silberman gave a talk about how citizen action campaigns use narratives to galvanize action. dan reed, our intrepid director, did a brilliant job directing all activities — leading, organizing, mobilizing.

we all met with alaska’s lieutenant governor when we arrived in juneau sunday morning. lt. gov. byron mallott spoke about the environment, the role of oil and gas in alaska, native peoples, and the impact climate change is having on this vast and breathtaking place. a representative from alaska airlines, which provided transportation for the students, flew in just to meet us.

we are so grateful to lindblad expeditions and alaska airlines for making this remarkable experiential learning opportunity possible. it has already had tangible impact. stories, yes. but several students said their planet forward experience has shown them the power of communication and storytelling in environmental, health, science and policy. several want to incorporate this mission into their careers. they know how much it is needed.

this trip was more than a success. it validated all we stand for and are trying to do. powerful experiential learning with a generation that has more reach and more potential than any in human history. at a time when we need these stories told. the trip was inspiring in every way.

here’s a preview of what we saw from instagram — with much more to come!

how we kicked off our trip:

 

we began our planet forward voyage in sitka, alaska. in the first two days, we met breathtaking fellow travelers. from the skies. and the ocean. these are our characters in our stories from our cameras. thanks to @lindbladexp and @alaskaair for helping student storyfest winners tell the stories that can 2022年卡塔尔世界杯官网 . // @laurakay3 (1/5) #storyfest2018 . . . . #planetfwd #lindbladexpeditions #natgeosealion #alaska #storytelling #storiesmatter #sustainabilitymatters #exploretocreate #passionpassport #adventureday #mytinyatlas #thisplacematters #storiestotell #thealaskalife #lonelyplanet #ig_alaska #naturealaska #ilovealaska #myalaskandream #awesomeearth #natureisneat #adventureawaits #makemoments #thisplacematters #wearestillin #worldenvironmentday #beautifuldestinations #welivetoexplore

a post shared by planet forward (@planetforward) on jun 5, 2018 at 4:11pm pdt

sewanee student vanessa moss shared the view from the cabins on the sea lion:

 

“north light in a forest unveils a hundred inventions of green. south light in winter paints cold pinks on icy peaks. east light brings morning promise, and west light, in summer, a lingering warmth that once again seduces alaskans into saying: okay, one more year. i’ll live here one more year, one more winter, then move to baja or tahiti or sri lanka. humorist tom bodett says: we don’t intend to stay here, we just come up for a summer and ‘forget to leave.’ next thing we know, we’ve been here thirty years.” -kim heacox (i’m moving to alaska, folks.)

a post shared by vanessa moss (@nessamoss) on jun 10, 2018 at 7:35am pdt

video from gw winner alex rubeinstein:

 

please consider this video my informal application to @natgeo // chronicling an incredible and life changing week aboard the #natgeosealion with @lindbladexp as one of @planetforward ‘s storyfest 2018 grand prize winners. adventure of a lifetime. . . . #wildlifephotography #naturephotography #wildlifevideosofinstagram #linbladexpeditions #planetfwd #nationalgeographic #natgeo

a post shared by alex rubenstein (@arubenstein.mov) on jun 14, 2018 at 11:49am pdt

planet forward board member michael silberman got some amazing shots of the bears they encountered:

 

only got to know them for an hour but missing these two after a week every time i think about napping. def a top five experience. (this was after an hour of foraging the coastline post hibernation and pre salmon season.) #brownbear #alaska @lindbladexp @planetforward #natgeosealion #wildlifephotography #bears

a post shared by michael silberman (@silbatron) on jun 17, 2018 at 7:17pm pdt

the zodiac boat planet forward director dan reed and i were on had a very close encounter with a whale:

 

halfway through our @lindbladexp with the @planetforward crew and still just stunned with the wildlife and landscapes we’ve seen in alaska. each day has been an adventure. a photographer’s dream, for sure #canon6d #planetfwd #lindbladexpeditions #storyfest2018 #natgeosealion #alaska

a post shared by dan reed (@danreed_dc) on jun 7, 2018 at 3:41pm pdt

planet forward’s laura whaling focuses on the ice:

 

ice cold

a post shared by laura whaling (@laurakay3) on jun 13, 2018 at 7:06pm pdt

alex found the sea lions:

 

sour then sweet | sea lions (aka “blubber slugs” as i recently heard them called) lounging along the rocks of the inian islands near cross sound, where the waters of the alaska coast meet the pacific ocean. this convergence of currents and flooding tides brings animals from miles around to feed; an open invitation for all wildlife. we even had a humpback whale breach right next to our boat, forcing us to turn off our engine until she continued on in the hunt for krill. • • • • #sealions @lindbladexp @natgeotravel @natgeoadventure @planetforward #planetfwd #linbladexpeditions #alaska #nature #beautyofnature #naturephotography #wildlifephotography #naturefilm #wildlifevideos

a post shared by alex rubenstein (@arubenstein.mov) on jun 12, 2018 at 5:27pm pdt

see alaska through the eyes of columbia university’s katherine baker:

 

just some alaska things. including pink sunsets, kayaking, sea otters, ice, among others. #alaska #travel #nationalgeographic #natgeo #lindbladexpeditions #planetforward #gopro #getoutside #sealion

a post shared by katherine baker (@katherinebaker4) on jun 7, 2018 at 4:10pm pdt

a fun accessory for the gopro helped laura get this amazing shot:

 

hey @gopro

a post shared by laura whaling (@laurakay3) on jun 7, 2018 at 7:00pm pdt

another whale sighting, courtesy of alex:

 

humpback whale, colorized, 2018 #naturephotography #wildlifephotography #humpbackwhale #alaska #planetfwd #linbladexpeditions

a post shared by alex rubenstein (@arubenstein.mov) on jun 11, 2018 at 8:13am pdt

finally, gorgeous captures of last light — which was at about 10 pm local time — as recorded by gw’s shandra furtado:

 

last light

a post shared by shandra furtado (@shandra.furtado) on jun 10, 2018 at 11:41am pdt

he applied for national geographic’s early career grant, and went to patagonia to photograph the biodiversity of these ecosystems. upon arriving back to d.c., he presented his work to national geographic, and proposed another story about parasites. he realized an immense challenge in this story, for he would have to get people to get over “their visceral aversion to parasites” and pay attention long enough to learn the fascinating science behind these interactions.

ultimately, his result was something uncannily beautiful. his inspirations were film noir, graphic novels, and japanese animation. in other words, hard lighting, dramatic backgrounds, and selective attention to detail. from japanese animation he learned that “not all details are equal”: for a human character, anime emphasizes the eyes in order to make characters more expressive, more emotionally appealing. varma had to figure out exactly what details were important in telling the beautiful, fascinating story about parasites he had in mind. in his photo of a crab infected with a parasitic barnacle, the important details were the millions of specks coming out of the crab: parasitic barnacle larvae. he didn’t care about the texture of the crab, or its color, but rather draws the viewers attention to the millions of parasitic offspring coming out of it.

similarly, when he was photographing bees for a different story, he realized that he had to find a new, fresh perspective that was interesting and engaging. he needed to find a different story about bees that had not been done before. after much experimentation, he zeroed in on the figures of bees emerging from their cells. he did a time lapse of bees developing, the first 21 days of a bees life condensed into 60 seconds, and the results were astonishing. varma has an ability to turn such essential natural processes that are normally hidden, hard to see, and hard to grasp into recognizable and beautiful processes.

the last piece that he showed us shocked me with a sense of wonder. he translated a hummingbird. the photo shoot was set up so that the hummingbird would fly through an artificial wind chamber, with a fog machine blowing visible fog so that you could see the air stream around the hummingbird. then the video footage was slowed down 100x so that the rapid pace of hummingbird life was suddenly translated into human time. the result was absolutely beautiful and breathtaking. i will remember the blinking of a hummingbird’s eye for the rest of my life.

up next: town hall: do we have the energy to lead? >

the theme of the summit was storytelling, and planet forward’s interpretation of good storytelling is comprised of three things: 1) compelling characters  2) overcoming obstacles for  3) worthy outcomes. 

each speaker at the summit told stories following this outline as if it was second nature to them. so how do i get to that point? how am i going to use this moving forward in my career? 

until my senior year in college, i hadn’t considered a career in environmental communication to be a fulfilling job for me.  i majored in natural resource management with the hope that i could work behind the scenes conserving land and natural resources. i have now worked as the communications intern for the center for collaborative conservation (ccc) for four years, and i didn’t realize how much i have learned and grown in that position until now, just a few months before i graduate. a little embarrassing, maybe, but better late than never. 

i started working at the ccc as a social media intern, managing the facebook and twitter pages. over the years i started taking on writing the newsletters, maintaining the website and developing posters and branding materials. before i knew it, i helped build the ccc a brand new website and develop social media plans. i now have a portfolio filled with professional websites, blogs, infographics, flyers, posters, videos, and more – all communication tools and knowledge that i can use in environmental communications. now with all these tools, i must find a way to use them effectively.

the first step, as outlined at the conference, is to find compelling characters. the ccc is connected to hundreds of fellows, researchers, and practitioners. these are people with lofty goals, rich lives, and unique work locations – a perfect assortment of characters. second, what obstacles did these people overcome? although funding and training are often significant obstacles, they are not the most interesting hurdles for a story. so what do they encounter? past fellows have come into conflict with people or groups with conflicting interests, others had to work with difficult rules and guidelines, some found that working in a culture that was different from their own was a new opportunity for growth, and many found that they overcame a personal roadblock during their work. lastly, the outcome of the stories must be worthy. the folks that we work with have dedicated their research and their careers to protecting, conserving, and restoring ecosystems and ensuring that the people that depend on those lands continue to thrive. at the ccc, we believe these are worthy of our time, effort, and funding. we wouldn’t be working with them if we didn’t believe in their contribution to land and people.

the ccc has impacted over 8000 individuals across 26 countries and tribal nations in our 10 years as a center, and we want to tell those stories. that’s why the ccc will launch our new storytelling initiative later in 2018. this project will include a practitioner interview series, program videos, interactive fellowship maps, and partnerships with undergraduate courses at csu!

everyone has a story. not everyone realizes it, and not everyone wants to tell theirs, but we all have one. the planet forward summit ignited a passion in me to find these stories and to find the right way to tell them. blogs can be the right way for some (it is for this little story), books for others. maybe it’s making a video, or capturing their day in photos, or going in-depth in a podcast. i have my whole career ahead of me to tell the stories of people in conservation, and i cannot wait to get started.