American Cetacean Society - What The American Cetacean Society Does

What The American Cetacean Society Does

At the national level, ACS maintains a web site with free educational resources, such as fact sheets for various cetacean species, many of which are linked to from Wikipedia, as well as more than 200 educational organizations, such Discovery.com, National Geographic, PBS, the Smithsonian Institution, and Scientific American.

Each of the Chapters have signature programs. For example, the Los Angeles Chapter conducts one of the longest running gray whale censuses in the U.S. Both the Los Angeles and the Orange County chapters conduct naturalist training programs.

Most chapters also conduct research grant programs to support research on cetacean issues.

Most chapters participate in local marine science educational events, and hand out free educational resources for teachers and students.

Since one of ACS's goals is to promote conservation which is based on science, all of these free educational resources are reviewed by ACS's scientific advisory board prior to distribution. Both the chapters and the national organization have scientific advisory boards. The current national scientific advisory board includes such notable scientists as John Calambokidis, a senior research biologist and co-founder of Cascadia Research; John Ford, who leads the Marine Mammal Group in the Conservation Biology Section within the science branch of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Denise Herzing, the Research Director of the Wild Dolphin Project; Hal Whitehead, professor of biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; and others.

ACS also participates in conservation advocacy campaigns, such as preventing the use of harmful sonar. ACS regularly sends a representative to meetings of the International Whaling Commission to persuade its members to uphold the moratorium on commercial whaling.