Shane Gero is a Canadian whale biologist and Scientist-in-Residence at Ottawa’s Carleton University. In 2005, he founded The Dominica Sperm Whale Project and for the last 20 years has spent thousands of hours in the company of the sperm whale families off the Caribbean island of Dominica. Gero’s research is motivated by a desire to understand animal societies, communication systems, the origins of culture, and to get people to protect their deep ocean home.

The Dominica Sperm Whale Project’s in-depth knowledge and long-term dataset of the sperm whale community in the Eastern Caribbean has provided the decades of baseline data upon which to launch Project CETI in 2020. Project CETI is a multi-disciplinary research initiative applying advanced machine learning and gentle robotics to listen to and decipher sperm whale communication. CETI’s team is made up of world’s leading artificial intelligence and natural language processing experts, cryptographers, linguists, marine biologist, roboticists, and underwater acousticians from a network of universities and other partners. Shane serves as CETI’s Lead Biologist. Project CETI is a TED Audacious Project.

As a National Geographic Explorer, Gero frequently speaks about his science, the whale’s stories, and conservation of our oceans at museums and universities around the world; including on stages for TEDx and National Geographic. His research has been featured in magazines and on television, most recently in Disney’s Secrets of the Whales.

Gero hopes to create a new dialogue around conservation of whale populations in which it’s about more than just numbers. Its about recognizing biologically important divisions between communities of whales; respecting their identity; and including cultural diversity in our definition of biodiversity.