Whale Center of New England

CONTACT:

PO Box 159
Gloucester, MA 01931-0159
978-281-6351
www.whalecenter.org

Mason Weinrich, Executive Director

DESCRIPTION:

Founded in 1979 as the Cetacean Research Unit (CRU), The Whaling Center of New England is one of our leading public teachers about Massachusetts’ endangered right and humpback whales and their fragile, highly vulnerable, habitat. CRU’s staff is actively engaged in research on whale ecology, and conveys science to the public on commercial whalewatching boats, addressing and answering questions in the wild, from 80,000 interested observers including 4,000 school children every year. Their newsletter, Flukeprints, is mailed to 2,500 households, teachers, and journalists five times annually. They maintain two websites: the one listed here (which receives over 15,000 hits per month) provides curricular materials to teachers of grades 1-8; another one is about Jeffrey’s Ledge, which CRU hopes to have annexed to the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Their staff also keeps observation records of individual whales, identifiable by their unique flukes, and this field research has been very useful to science. Philanthropy speaks up for the whales, and you can amplify the message.

(2000: NATURE: Biodiversity)