Project CETI’s 2024 Annual Report: A Year of Breakthroughs and New Frontiers
We are thrilled to share our 2024 Annual Report - a reflection on a year filled with groundbreaking discoveries, interdisciplinary collaboration, and deepening connections with both marine life and the communities who support this work. As we embark on our fifth year as an organization, we still firmly believe that working together, across disciplines, with the mission of deeply understanding the language of nonhuman species, will bring us closer to the wonder of the world around us.
In 2024, we made significant strides in our research, discovering that sperm whales possess a phonetic alphabet and are capable of social learning, encouraging us to rethink our understanding and relationship to the nonhuman world. We’ve also continued to develop our scientific technology, including custom bio-inspired suction cups for our tags, custom drones and development of a new custom glider system to support our data collection efforts.
We continued to grow our partnership with New York University School of Law’s More Than Human Life (MOTH) Project with the goal of establishing legal and ethical principles for nonhuman animal communication technologies including the development of a forthcoming article in Ecology Law Quarterly and now published on New York University School of Law’s pre-print site (SSRN): “What if We Understood what Animals are Saying? The Legal Impact of AI-assisted Studies of Animal Communication.”
Beyond our scientific research, we engaged in thoughtful collaborations in the arts sphere through our CETI mural and design competition created in partnership with the Waitukubuli Artist Association in Dominica and the LET’S DIVE scent created with NYC based perfume house D.S. & DURGA.
Our Founder and President, Dr. David Gruber, spent the past year reflecting on the words of our late principal advisor and dear friend, Dr. Roger Payne, who reminded us:
“It’s time for us to once again listen to the whales—and, this time, to do it with every bit of empathy and ingenuity we can muster so that we might possibly understand them.”
As we press forward, these words inspire us and we are more motivated than ever by the possibility of understanding the mysteries of whales and the ocean and working together to protect the extraordinary species that call it home.