The William A. Watkins Collection of Marine Mammal Sound Recordings and Data

Recordings of various marine mammal species collected over a span of seven decades.

The William A. Watkins Collection of Marine Mammal Sound Recordings and Data

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has gifted marine mammal data and artifacts to the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

There are two components to the WHOI gift. The William A. Watkins Collection of Marine Mammal Sound Recordings and Data consists of Watkin’s data set, audio and video recordings, papers and reprints. The William A. Watkins and William E. Schevill Collection of Images and Instruments consists of photographs, recording instruments and harpoons. These collections were created or collected by William Alfred Watkins, with the assistance of William E. Schevill, Peter Tyack, Melba Caldwell, Thomas Potter, and G. Carleton Ray, among others.

Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Database

The William A. Watkins Collection of Marine Mammal Sound Recordings consists of recordings of more than 60 species of marine mammals collected over a span of seven decades in a wide range of geographic areas by Watkins and many others.

Access Recordings

Shot while on a snorkel trip to Tonga. Humpback baby is a week old. Very curious about us and kept swimming up to us.

William Alfred Watkins

William Alfred Watkins was a pioneer in marine mammal bioacoustics, studying the acoustic behavior of whales, dolphins, and seals in their natural environments.

He was born January 8, 1926 in Conakry, French Guinea in West Africa, where his parents worked for the Christian Missionary Alliance Mission. After receiving a B.A. degree in anthropology from Wheaton College in Illinois in 1947, he worked on the college’s staff in electrical and radio systems until 1950 before returning to West Africa, where he was born and raised. Interested in linguistics, he mastered more than 30 African languages. He built and operated an international radio station (ELWA) in Monrovia, Liberia from 1951-1957. He also served as President of the West African Broadcasting Association, and was station manager and language department chief of ELWA before moving back to the United States and Cape Cod.

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