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Whale and Marine Life Video Archives

Expanded Description

The Whale and Marine Life Video Archive

The Whale and Marine Life Video Archive at The Whale Video Company, a sole-proprietorship, represents the world’s most comprehensive and consistent documentation of the behaviors and life histories of humpback whales, among many other marine species. These videos began in 1988 from Gulf of Maine whale watches, supplementing the longest running scientific research on any cetacean population in the world. The videos include four generations of individually identified whales, many displaying characteristic behaviors.

This unique and irreplaceable collection documents the daily behaviors of marine life primarily on the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a federally protected marine sanctuary.  The archive documents all sightings of marine life from morning until sunset, daily from mid-April through the end of October for a sixteen year period of time (1988-2003).

An educational and research asset of 8,800 hours of behavioral evidence, equivalent to fifty years of full-time work is the combined effort of 68,384 hours on the water recording behaviors and 34,120 hours of review, research and annotation (as of December 2010).

“It is imperative to the scientific community that this unique collection be archived for future study and analysis.  If possible, the entire data set should be preserved, as there is currently no absolute knowledge of what could be considered important sightings, behaviors and associations, decades into the future.  This is particularly important as the life expectancy of the large whales is not known and the individual whales documented may be research subjects five or six decades into the future.”  Dr. Roger Payne

The archive is comprised of 8,200 master tapes (analog).  The oldest tapes date to April 1988.  Some degradation is now being noticed, making preservation an immediate priority.  Preservation is of paramount importance to the owners.  The location or custodian is a lesser consideration at this time.

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