Upcoming: Decoding Dolphins in the Wild. How difficult can it be? with Denise Herzing
October 11 2025, 16:00 GMT/ 12:00 EST/ 09:00 PST (4pm GMT/ 12 pm EST/ 9am PST)
Decoding Dolphins in the Wild. How difficult can it be?
Dolphins have a complicated acoustic communication system. Although we un derstand much of their sounds and correlated behavior we are still learning new things. AI has opened up new tools to use for exploring nonhuman animal communication. Although machine learning can help us mine our large data sets and cluster sound types, looking for repeated patterns and structure and interpretting meaning is now the greatest challenge. Adding underwater observations that are correlated with sounds help us further decipher many of these complex multimodal layers. DolphinGemma, a new generative AI, allows us to predict what follows a test sound. This program will be open source eventually for other researchers to use. An interactive underwater computer system, CHAT, has been used to also explore dolphin mimicry and functional comprehension of simple labels for objects. We will explore these approaches with the goal of decoding dolphin communication.
About the speaker
Dr. Denise Herzing, Founder and Research Director of the Wild Dolphin Project, has completed almost 4 decades of long-term study of the Atlantic spotted dolphins inhabiting Bahamian waters. She received her B.S. in Marine Zoology; her M.A. in Behavioral Biology; and her Ph.D. in Behavioral Biology/Environmental Studies. She is an Affiliate Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida. Dr. Herzing is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow with the Explorers Club, a scientific advisor for the Lifeboat Foundation and the American Cetacean Society, and on the board of Schoolyard Films. In addition to many scientific articles, she is the co-editor of Dolphin Communication and Cognition, author of “Dolphin Diaries: My 25 years with Spotted Dolphins in the Bahamas” and “The Wild Dolphin Project (2002)”.
This talk will be hosted on Zoom, please register to receive a calendar invitation including link to join.
