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Eavesdropping on an Underwater World

June 22, 2016

William A. Watkins helped pioneer the field marine mammal bioacoustics, opening our ears to an underwater world of sound. Watkins was a self-taught electrical engineer who initially came to WHOI to help his mentor and research collaborator, marine biologist William Schevill, record sounds of life in the ocean. Over the next 40-plus years, Watkins went on to make thousands of hours of underwater recordings of whales, dolphins, and other marine animals. Watkins also collected and saved similar work by other ocean scientists, much of which is now available online as the William Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Database. (Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)