ACS History

A Brief History of the Founding of the American Cetacean Society

by Bemi DeBus, Charter Member

As a volunteer organization, much of the history of ACS is intertwined with the history of our many dedicated volunteers. To learn more about ACS history and the people involved, both past and present, you can click on any of the above photos, look up "people" in the indices of publication reprints, and/or browse the bios in the conference sections.

It might be said that it all began in September of 1967, when the question of "farming" whales as a source of food came up in a meeting at "Meals For Millions," purveyor of indefinite-shelf-life, multipurpose food. It seemed to be a good idea, which would provide a great deal of extra protein for the world's hungry.

But we did our homework and came back with the notion, a quaint one in those days, that the whales themselves needed saving. We looked around for a group with which to join forces in this type of conservation and discovered - nothing! At that time the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was, of course, interested only in numbers of whales which could be killed, not saved.

So it was a question of "put up or shut up," and that meant work. We decided that our organization would need more assistance than Clark Cameron doing public relations and myself as volunteer and writer. We needed an educator; enter Ken Moore of Pasadena City College. We needed a yachtsman so we snagged Phil Hunt. (It turned out that Ken also was a yachtsman, so that was a double leg-up.)

On November 3, 1967, the first ACS meeting was held. The following weekend, Dr. Bob Brownell and I took out our first whalewatch. It was on the Swift out of Santa Barbara, and we had about 100 Sierra Club members. (To this day I can't remember if we saw any whales. I do remember that the ocean was so calm that I leaned over the pulpit and took a picture of the name of the boat in reflection. We did, however, have some 20 or so people become seasick in spite of the flat water.)

On December 16 we had a meeting at Marineland in Palos Verdes, with all the top cetologists from Santa Barbara to San Diego, some 15 or 20 of them. They weren't too certain about what role this impertinent little new organization might play. We too were unsure, but we did have some grandiose dreams.

In the beginning we had the help of private yachtsmen for our whalewatching, but this turned out to be an impractical expense for them. Also, the variations in the unstructured whalewatching may have been fun but were hardly helpful to the scientific community.

Our monthly meetings were exciting and drew surprisingly large crowds, considering our youth. On March 23, 1968 we held a second meeting with scientists at Marineland, which gave us a real push in right direction. Feeling that we had some importance, we filed as a non-profit organization with the state of California.

In April 1968 we participated in the very first of many shows, festivals, and exhibitions at the national meeting of the American Society for Oceanography. We were the hit of the show with our recordings of humpback whale songs, made by Roger Payne and ACS Board member Ron Johnson.

ACS has since become a medium for scientists, many of whom have a great deal to say but don't know how to say it or to whom - a "telephone" as it were between the scientists and the interested laypeople who don't know much about whales and dolphins but who want to learn.

Looking back is fun and a bit emotional at times. We had a lot going for us and some of it we really flubbed. We had our share of problems, many of which we were able to work out. Most importantly, we had the support of the many people who joined us and the many more who have profited from our hard work.

Was it all worth it? Ask the whales!

This article is from the ACS archives.