David Gruber

David Gruber is Founder and CEO of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), which is working to decipher sperm whale communication. An oceanographer, inventor, and explorer, David has built his career around seeing the natural world from the perspective of other living beings. Along the way, he has discovered more than 200 biofluorescent marine species and pioneered technologies, from cameras that see from the perspective of sharks to gentle robotic systems that allow scientists to observe and interact with marine life in new ways. He is a National Geographic Explorer and Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, bringing scientists into collaboration with artists and thinkers while exploring the ethical implications of communicating beyond the human world. His work asks a profound question: if we could truly listen to another species, how might it change the way we understand our relationship with the living world?

Project CETI

Project CETI is an ambitious scientific effort to decipher sperm whale communication and explore the intelligence of another species. A collaboration of more than 50 scientists, engineers, and researchers across marine biology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, robotics, underwater acoustics, and cryptography, CETI records sperm whale vocalizations and the social and behavioral contexts in which they occur. The team develops nature-inspired, minimally invasive technologies to gather this unprecedented dataset in the whales’ own environment. CETI has revealed previously unknown complexity in how sperm whales communicate, including a combinatorial structure researchers describe as a “phonetic alphabet.”

To hear more, go to https://projectceti.org/listen