Here is a unique opportunity to invest in and join, as a patron of science, the climax of a world-class scientific and conservation research project (see www.pbs.org/odyssey): a five-year (from 2000), systematic circumnavigation of the globe, gathering the first baseline data on concentrations, distributions and effects of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in the world’s oceans.

“Organohalogens” are artificial toxic chemicals that have spread worldwide via wind and ocean currents. Soluble in fat, they accumulate in animals and are passed intact up food chains, concentrating ten times at each step. Large carnivores (e.g., whales and humans) at the top of the chain–seven steps up from the bottom– receive 107, or 10 million times, that of the water around them. OA researchers and colleagues have been systematically sampling skin and blubber the world over from live sperm whales, fish and squid, measuring their toxication. Whales are good indicators, owing to their high body fat, long life-span, and position in the food chain. Entering Year IV, OA has met or exceeded all goals; the scientific model is taking shape and the data is ready to assemble to help estimate the health of the open oceans, alert the world to the threat, and provide a basis for future studies. The team is small and from leading institutions: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; the Southwest Fisheries Science Center (NOAA) at La Jolla; Cambridge, Cornell, and Ehime (Japan) Universities. Project Director is Dr. Roger Payne, world-renowned marine mammalogist who discovered that humpback whales “sing” and that sounds of fin and blue whales can be heard across oceans, winner of a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship, and co-author and director of the IMAX production, Whales, featuring OA’s R/V Odyssey, a 93-foot steel-hulled ketch. The Project still needs to raise $750,000 through June, 2005. Venture philanthropist donor-investors will be welcomed to participate in observations and policy discussions on the final leg of the voyage, and in data analyses thereafter. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to participate in a scientific expedition like no other on Earth.