Title:Treasures of the Sea

Georgetown faculty and alumni apply their unique talents to better understand and protect the remarkable marine mammals who inhabit our oceans

Each year, Distinguished University Professor Janet Mann brings a cohort of students to Western Australia to conduct field research for the Shark Bay Dolphin Project—the world’s second-longest-running study of dolphins in the wild.

“It’s a life-changing experience for them,” says Mann, a professor of biology and psychology who has received national recognition for her mentoring of undergraduates. “We’re living in very close quarters. On a boat, everyone has a role, everyone shares in the domestic tasks. It’s physically and intellectually demanding, and also socially demanding.”

In the surrounding waters, 3,000-plus Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins carry on activities very similar to those of their human cousins aboard ship: forming social groups, finding food, demonstrating tasks to younger members.

“We all find it a privilege to observe in such detail the lives of another species, and be taken a little outside yourself,” Mann says. “I think what students begin to appreciate is that dolphins are another big-brained, complex animal with rich, intricate lives as individuals.”

Dolphin Discoveries

Mann is among Georgetown faculty, students, and alumni from a variety of disciplines— spanning biology, public policy, data science, history, the arts, and more—working to enhance human knowledge about marine mammals and build awareness of increasing threats to the ocean environment.

As Mann explains, little was known about wild dolphin behavior and development prior to the establishment of the Shark Bay Dolphin Project in 1984. Because dolphins typically live 50 years or more, longitudinal studies are critical.

“They’re a residential population—both sexes stay for their entire life so we can study both males and females from birth to death. The findings have been really significant, influencing studies of dolphins and whales elsewhere in the world,” Mann says.

In addition to having identifiable dorsal fins, each dolphin exhibits distinctive behavior, so researchers have been able to track and name individuals and families throughout the 40-year study period. (The Skrub family example includes brothers Pub and Grub, and younger sisters Rubadub and Hubba.)

Through their research, Mann and her colleagues have revealed the previously unknown world of dolphin social interactions. “Dolphins don’t live in a pod the way they’re often described. They join and leave each other in flexible ways,” she notes.

“And yet they have preferential bonds or social relationships embedded in those groups, so it’s not random. Just like you go and meet your friend for coffee, they go to meet up with their close associates, and there are some that they avoid.”

Another key discovery: dolphins use tools. Mann explains that a certain subgroup of the dolphin population known as “spongers” have learned how to attach conical basket sponges to their beaks in order to hunt for bottom-dwelling fish. Most of these fish lack swim bladders—gas-filled organs that facilitate the dolphin’s ability to locate and hone in on the fish because their echolocation detects the different density of the swim bladder. While echolocation may be less effective in finding these prey, with the sponge, the dolphin’s beak is protected while it disturbs the fish in the rocky substrate, resulting in a quick meal.

A still-unsolved question is how dolphins transmit know-how—including the use of sponges—through the generations. “While we know it is by learning from the mother, the mechanism is unknown,” Mann says. “One of my Ph.D. students is trying to see if females actively teach. For example, does a mother change her hunting behavior to benefit a naive observer? Does she slow down or dive for longer when the calf is with her?”

Mann has published numerous scientific papers with both graduate students and undergraduates. She is particularly grateful for the university’s funding of student research. “The summer research fellowships that Georgetown offers have made a huge difference,” she says.

Far from the pristine waters of Shark Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site, Mann has also focused attention on dolphins close to home. Working with the support of Georgetown’s Earth Commons, she directs the PotomacChesapeake Dolphin Project. In the aftermath of devastating population loss from 2013 to 2015 due to morbillivirus, the project is investigating how dolphins’ synchronous breathing increases vulnerability to disease. Since the project started in 2015, they have identified over 2,000 individuals that use the Potomac River in the summer months.

In dedicating her career to advancing knowledge about highly intelligent and complex marine animals, Mann believes that enhanced understanding of other species can promote enhanced protection. “Hopefully people can appreciate that there isn’t this hierarchy that we’re on top of, that we just get to do what we want to the rest of nature. These studies remind us that there are other animals on this planet— from dung beetles to dolphins—that deserve the right to live.”

Listening and learning

Like Mann, marine conservation scientist Elizabeth Hogan (SFS’97) has engaged in work leading her to remote regions of the world—in Hogan’s case, literally poles apart. Most recently, she traveled to Antarctica in her role as science and innovation program director for a National Geographic initiative.

“The focus is very large-scale systems change, so I’m fortunate enough to work with outstanding leading scientists,” Hogan says. “Our objective is to achieve a very broad snapshot of the overall health of certain ecosystems and find solutions using a multidisciplinary approach.”

In Antarctica, Hogan and her colleagues are studying how warming ocean temperatures may impact the health of ice seals. These marine mammals, once hunted to near extinction, are protected by a number of international treaties but now face new man-made threats.

“What role does large-scale systems change play in pathogen transfer among these mammals, and what can we learn from unusual mortality events such as the recent deaths of thousands of elephant seals off the coast of Argentina?”

Integral to Hogan’s work is a partnership with local communities in its areas of study, which span the globe from the Amazon rainforest to the Hindu Kush.

For several years, Hogan has been working with Indigenous communities in the Arctic on issues of food security and the conservation of beluga whales, narwhals, and Arctic char in the face of accelerated climate change.

“I so greatly appreciate the opportunity that they’re giving me to learn from them—getting to a place where the elders are trusting enough to talk to me about what they’ve observed and what they know to be different about a certain place than how it was 30 years ago,” Hogan says.

“Trying to think in a completely different way than how I’ve been trained to think is its own challenge,” she continues. “At one point we were at an unusual location where several elders had grown up, but hadn’t been back in a long time. They kept making the observation, ‘There are more rocks now, there are more rocks now.’ I finally realized, ‘Oh, the water is lower.’

“I have to be much more open to thinking differently. It’s a constant process. I don’t always know what I’m listening for.”

As Hogan notes, that constant quest for learning was fueled by her Georgetown education. “The biggest impact was very specific to the Jesuit value of intellect and being curious about the world around you,” she says.

She also credits her studies at the School of Foreign Service as foundational to her career, leading to several decades of work in conservation policy prior to her joining National Geographic in 2021. “It was incredibly valuable to me to have an understanding of what international organizations and international relations can achieve.”

As a program manager for the global nonprofit World Animal Protection from 2012 to 2018, for example, Hogan and her colleagues brought attention to the issue of marine wildlife entangled in fishing gear and the related issue of ocean plastic pollution.

“Unfortunately, the [U.N.] Global Plastics Treaty didn’t come to fruition this past year, but I’m still hoping to see that come to pass,” Hogan says. “Often the most effective policy change is taking place at the local level.” She cites the Washington, DC, 5-cent plastic bag tax, which led to a dramatic drop in plastic pollution in the Anacostia River.

“The challenge with all international policy is enforcement,” she notes. “I see a lot of promise in free trade agreements. As opposed to a standalone and often voluntary international environmental guideline, something that has economic teeth is more likely to be adhered to.

“As frustrating as it can be to recognize what a slow and difficult climb it is, a lot of people want to dedicate themselves to this work,” Hogan says.

“Whatever route they choose, whether that’s through health care or economics or environmental studies, I’m optimistic about the number of people that genuinely want to improve the world and leave it better than they found it.”

‘Music is a way in’

Drawn to the majesty of whales from an early age, Hogan’s fellow alumna Michaela Harrison (SFS’92) has chosen an unconventional route to explore their world—music.

“I was around 12 when CD players came out, and one of the first CDs I ended up with was a recording of whale songs,” Harrison says. “It stirred something in me, and I tucked it away deep inside.”

As she later transitioned from work in the nonprofit sector to a full-time career as a singer, Harrison continued to encounter signs pointing her on a new path—among them, an aweinspiring whale sighting off Maryland’s Assateague Island and an introduction to interspecies communication through the book Dolphin Dreamtime by environmental activist Jim Nollman.

In 2016, Harrison began performing with her band at Projeto Tamar, a sea turtle reserve in the Brazilian state of Bahia. “I casually mentioned to the director one day that I had always harbored this dream of singing with whales,” she says. “The day after that conversation, he booked me on a whale watching tour.”

Out on the sea, the tour group spotted three humpback whales. “I was so overcome with emotion that I just burst into song. The song that came to me was ‘Wade in the Water,’” Harrison says. “The whales swam right over to the boat, and they danced. It was this sublime experience.

“That’s when I knew it was time to begin, whatever this was that had started as a seed in my childhood.”

Harrison joined forces with Projecto Baleia Jubarte, a marine research and conservation group founded in 1988 to protect Brazil’s threatened population of humpback whales, and launched the Whale Whispering Project. Beginning with Harrison’s encounters with Bahia’s whales—including listening to whale song underwater through the use of a hydrophone—the project now encompasses activities ranging from live Whale Whispering events in DC to musical recordings including her most recent release, “Love Wins.”

As the project continues to evolve, Harrison has plans to develop a theatrical presentation, a full album, and a documentary, as well as increasing her geographic reach to include populations such as the North Atlantic right whale.

At its heart, the Whale Whispering Project is about healing. “I’ve been able to see over and over that in listening to whale song, everybody stops whatever they’re doing and goes to a place of stillness and peace,” Harrison says.

Forging powerful connections between humans and whales, Harrison has found a unique path to raising awareness of threats to the world’s oceans. “We need to pull all the possibilities out of the hat in terms of how we address this crisis that we’re facing.”

Delving deep in the spiritual meaning of whale song, Harrison has also embarked on a more personal journey of healing for the descendants of Africans sold into slavery in the Americas. “As I have delved into ancestral knowledge, I have felt that people on slave ships heard the whales singing and found comfort. So at the core of this work is reaching into that connection that my ancestors were able to make, to support the reckoning with the legacy of slavery.”

It is perhaps no accident that “Wade in the Water” sprang immediately to mind when Harrison first began singing with whales. “I had the high honor and blessing of being mentored by Bernice Johnson Reagon, the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock. ‘Wade in the Water’ was one of the group’s songs I really identified with.

“Harriet Tubman sang the song to encourage people in the escape process to trust that a way would be made across dangerous waters,” she says.

“Something Dr. Reagon really impressed on me is how music is a way in,” Harrison says. “People from various backgrounds and perspectives might not necessarily be able to sit down at a table and talk, but the power of melody, of sound has an effect that brings people into resonance, and creates spaces where different levels of understanding and exchange are possible.

“So the Whale Whispering work is about our relationship with the planet and the ecosystem, and it’s also work on a personal level with my ancestors and their journey—reaching into the musical exchange with these great beings of a compassionate, generous nature to create and co-create songs of healing for this time.”