Cover photo: For World Whale Day 2020 we organised a beach clean on Portobello in Edinburgh, Scotland. After the clean, we had an unusual photo shoot with a message: our friend Valentina, dressed up in an orca costume, pretended to eat the rubbish we collected, symbolising the marine litter cetaceans often consume.

Watch the video here for the full story.

If we want to make a difference, sharing our work with the public is essential – not only to spread the word about our research, but also to allow others to provide feedback on what we do. Whale Wise should act for the benefit of others – this requires our results to be accessible to everyone.

A large part of this exchange of information involves telling stories – stories of our research, the whales, the people we meet and our future direction. To this end, we are:

We try to share our research and stories through film for the public. Watch our short videos on our YouTube and Vimeo channels.

Our first feature-length film, ‘The Presence of Knowing’, shares the story of our 2019 field season in Iceland. By sharing our story and real mistakes, we strive to inspire other young conservationists to pursue their passions. The full film is available to watch below:

Partnered with University of Iceland and Barba, we are creating a virtual reality (VR) programme with schools and museums in Iceland, Norway and Denmark using 360 footage captured during the Arctic Sense expedition of research, wildlife and climatic highlights. Within this, problem-solving tasks related to fieldwork and data analysis will provide real-life applications of national school curricula related to science, maths and sustainability.

Our overall aim is to foster environmental stewardship in children and demonstrate the power of virtual reality to provide immersive education and virtual mobility to a fragile Arctic.

The project is currently part-funded by a Nordplus Horizontal grant.

We are working with the Húsavík Whale Museum in Iceland to create an innovative hands-on activity for children. Inspired by the Build-A-Whale programme created by Strawberry Isle Marine Research Society which allows participants to re-build a killer whale skeleton, we will be doing something similar but with a harbour porpoise.

The particular porpoise we are using was caught in a gillnet (active fishing gear), providing a unique opportunity to teach individuals about the real dangers whales face and sustainable solutions. We aim to have a museum exhibit that shares the story of the porpoise and an education programme that then allows children/young adults to rebuild the skeleton with assistance. The skeleton will also be transported to local schools as a traveling education programme.

Due to the fragile nature of a harbour porpoise skeleton, some of the bones will need to be 3D printed. Luckily we are able to collaborate with the FabLab Húsavík which will assist in printing some of the bones.