Ocean Alliance

In 1970, renowned cetacean biologist Dr. Roger Payne made a groundbreaking discovery that humpback whales sing songs — and with this, the global movement of whale conservation was born. The following year, Dr. Payne founded Ocean Alliance, a whale-conservation and marine-protection nonprofit organization. In the decades since, Dr. Payne and Ocean Alliance have been internationally recognized, making critical advancements in the field of marine conservation. For the past 50 years, Ocean Alliance has studied southern right whales, the most endangered of the great whales. Through this program, which is the longest running study of its kind, Ocean Alliance follows the lives of more than 2,600 individual whales.

Ocean Alliance describes the Voyage of the Odyssey as its most ambitious and important initiative. The five-and-a-half-year expedition, which began in 2000 in San Diego and ended in 2005 in Boston, covered every major ocean on the planet. Scientists traveled 87,000 miles and collected more than 952 blubber biopsies from whales. The findings were critical in exposing chemical pollution as the second-greatest threat to the world's oceans and whale populations. Through innovative programs like this, Ocean Alliance has solidified its position as one of the world's preeminent marine conservation organizations.