 They say if you are able to combine your passion with your gifts and your values, you have found your purpose. My next guest falls directly into that category. A gifted wildlife photographer, her photos have received many national and international awards and appeared in prestigious media outlets such as National Geographic and the BBC, which featured her photos of the Mola Mola sunfish. But she is best known for her remarkable underwater photos of whales from places as exotic as Tonga and as familiar as the Monterey Bay. Tonight you'll hear about her amazing journey, leading safaris in Africa, photo shoots in Antarctica, her contributions to science, a close encounter with a baby whale, and the controversial image of cats and dogs that put her in the national spotlight. I'm Becca Reeve and we'll be right back with Jodi Frediani. Welcome Jodi Frediani. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Oh well you're we're so happy that you have taken the time to share your thoughts with us today and to share all about your work, traveling the world, shooting all kinds of animals and and then focusing on whales. Just wonderful and speaking of of your whale photos, I would really like to start this interview by showing the audience what kind of work that you do and then we'll get back to how you how you got to do it. The first photo I'd like to show is of whales making bubbles. Can you talk about how you got this amazing photo? Sure and I find it interesting that you have decided to start with that photo because right now I'm working with a colleague on several papers on bubble use by humpback whales. So it's a very dear subject to me and I swim with humpback whales on the Silver Bank which is off the Dominican Republic and have been doing that for 20 years now and the males use bubbles in in competitive groups where they're competing to escort a female and usually what we see at the surface is a whale uh what's called the primary escort will come to the top come to the surface and blow this great big bubble blast so this is a great big bubble trail but sometimes they're blowing bubbles beneath the surface and if we're in a boat we don't necessarily see that. So I have been able to get in the water and sometimes the whale swims by but in this case we knew that this whale was swimming past us and we couldn't get in the water at that moment in time it wasn't appropriate so I just took my camera on the housing and I we're in a small boat I just leaned over the side stuck my camera in there and started shooting and so it is a little bit like a trail cam where you set it up where you expect the animal to be and and it takes photos every time it moves in this case I knew the animals was passing by I had no idea what it was doing what direction it was going in but I stuck my camera in the right way um and and just clicked the shutter and and got that image. So amazing where you when you got home or can you look at it there could you look at the boat and see if you got it? I can't wait that long I mean that's one of the blessings one of the blessings with digital photography is you don't have to wait until you get home and you send the film in and it comes back and you find out all the mistakes you made you have to get to find that out right away and you get the the satisfaction of knowing when you've actually captured something um and that and that is pretty unique scientists don't really know exactly all the things that whales are doing when they we are blowing those bubbles no I mean it's in fact um there are papers that have been done on um as I mentioned the competitive behavior where these whales grow blow great big bubbles at the surface and it's thought to be a way of screening the female from the other males who are in the group and showing how powerful they are and then there is kind of a bit of work that's been done on humpback whales using bubbles um in what's called cooperative bubble net feeding up in Alaska where they blow these these carousels of bubbles and capture the herring inside of them but the rest of it there's there's not really anything out there so I'm working with a colleague and we are preparing beginning to work on several papers to deal with that just exciting that is exciting and I I think that it is really um it's really wonderful how you've been able to keep your love of art and of animals and of conservation all all going at one time and we'll get back to the science work that you do with photography and uh but first I'm I would very like I would like to know how you managed to combine all this was it it seems like you're doing all the things you love and you've created more than a career you've created a life and how did would you was this your plan or did this evolve um so it's it's a long story and my life has evolved um through I've worn many hats let's put it this way I've had uh done many different things on my lifetime but when I was in high school at that moment where you're deciding what to do and what to study um when you go off to college I wanted to study biology um and I wanted to study art and I considered going to the Sorbonne and I considered going to Scripps University to study marine biology and um I I went a slightly different path but I was very interested at that time in studying um art and science and particularly I fascinated with animals and animal behavior I mean we always had I didn't have any brothers and sisters so my siblings were the dogs the cats the parakeets the lizards you know all the rest of the animals that we had my parents both love loved animals so we had a lot of pets and went to the zoo and um I I then detoured I went away and I and I studied photography in high school but I didn't really stick with it until um until I was an adult and took some classes at Cabrio College and found that I really loved the photography love photography and initially used it to photo for for advertising purposes because my um my husband at the time and I raised dairy goats and we sold them nationally and internationally and so I would photograph the goats and you know this is the perfect goat in its elbow and it wasn't until I basically retired from my various and sundry work um things that I began to really get into my photography and um combine come back around and combine the science and the art and my passion for animals now one of the one of the projects that you did I believe you did in graduate school did did hinge on your passion for animals it was about the other homeless homeless cats and dogs can you talk a little bit about you accepted that assignment and I think that must have been hard to do talk about that assignment it was definitely hard um at that point in time um and I should say that when I uh I said my life has gone through many many different directions I started out as a biology major and I went off to um the university and um and then then took a break got married has kids at goats did other things and then when I got divorced I went back to school and I studied art and photography and that project that you reference I was um doing a graduate program at UC Santa Cruz and my professor said my advisor said this request came in to do this project at the SPCA and if you don't want to do it I will do it but I think it's your project and it was to track two animals two dogs through the the whole process the intake process um you know what happened to the animals the adoption of one and the euthanasia of another and um I said okay because not only was it about animals and I had been involved it's one of my hats um training training animals training dogs and cats for many years and training people to deal with their animals behavioral issues and so we've done a lot of work uh at animal shelters but I had also always been fascinated about what I call um real real life processes that are hidden so um if I traveled in Europe and we went to a meat market and here we buy meat it's in a plastic it's plastic wrapped you know and and it's cuts we don't see the head we don't see the feet but in Europe it's all there I mean the carcasses are hanging the heads are in the in the cases the chickens feet are there and I was always fascinated by that and I was also an organic farmer and we raised livestock here and we had a custom butcher come out and he would butcher hogs and I would photograph that so it it made yes but this made perfect sense to me to do this SPA SPCA project and yet I remember one day and it was a small small group of students in this program um one of the other other students said to me you're not taking enough images you're not shooting enough and I said at that time I think I lived in Santa Cruz for maybe 20 years and I said I'm getting lost going to the SPCA that's how difficult it is for me it's having that impact on me and one day um one of the shelter workers had said to me you choose which animal we're going to euthanize today exactly and I said I'm afraid that's not in my job description I'll photograph you you make that choice so it was it was quite challenging um and it was a satisfying project the director of the SPCA at the time wanted to she wanted to end euthanasia basically and shelters would always put out cute photos of kittens and puppies in their fundraising appeals and she wanted something else that showed what the shelter workers had to deal with and um and it it became a project entitled Our Other Homeless um it was exhibited at the it's at the art center I thought I don't remember what it's called anymore in Santa Cruz was featured in the um the Sentinel and the San Jose Mercury and at least one of my images ended up on a billboard in Los Angeles that caused quite a to-do um and then was covered on KGO in San Francisco like and people said get a life how dare you you know expose us to this and what was that photo um I believe it was it was the barrel room at the shelter where um it's even difficult to talk about it animals you know dogs and cats would be euthanized because there were too many of them there were no homes for them and after a certain length of time um they they would go through that process and then they would be put in barrels in a walk-in freezer a walk-in cooler you know refrigerator and once a week the tallow company would have a truck come and all these barrels would get dumped into the back of this truck and they would go to San Jose and they would get processed into tallow and whatever else there might be deer roadkill deer and others in there as well and I was given access so I photographed in the barrel room I climbed a ladder when the truck was there photographed down into the truck and I believe the photo and it was a was a non-profit that had had um purchased the billboard space and ran this image again because at that time it was a real big push to end this overpopulation of pets and this crazy thing that we do of absolutely loving and adoring these animals and yet allowing them to breed or breeding them and and then having them killed on mass you know thousands a year so that is um I'm sort of a minor theme I notice in your work is some of it is very beautiful and others are very painful you have really beautiful photos of animals in Africa and you also have photos of elephants having their having prosthetic legs attached which is great that they can get legs but it makes you feel badly that they lost their legs or their feet have been injured what is that it's like two it's like two sides of you it's like you have a journalistic side and then and a beauty side how are you how does it feel to merge those two well I say schizophrenic um to me it it's really both sides are really important and one of the things that I've I've learned along the way is um people get overwhelmed by the difficult and particularly when it comes to pets I mean it's amazing how much human suffering we have become enured to and can can look at but when it comes to animals or pets people have a very very difficult time with that and and I think that's as it should be unfortunately it should be the same with humans and so you can't just um you can't just sort of bludgeon people you know and say this has got to change because they it's like emotionally we just block out and I think to really get people to care about all animals in the planet is they need to see the beauty at the same time and the story of the prosthesis is actually a very positive story um or a positive outcome of a very difficult story and that's a case of landmines in you know Thailand and Laos um where people are trying to hurt people and then the elephants are the collateral damage because they're out there and they um you know in some cases this it's the calf of a mother who is working you know hauling logs and the calf is out grazing and stops on a landmine and and loses loses its limb so yeah so what I I love about your photos is they tell a story each one I love the photo in Africa of the mom line and the baby lion he's just resting her head I'm just exhausted I'm using you yeah I I'm afraid that was one of those photos that um we had gone out on a in in Zambia on a night safari which is a common thing to do because you get to see different things at night and we came across this pride of lions just several lionesses and other cubs and they were sound asleep and the next thing is you know there's bright light is on them and it probably turned the engines off I don't remember and the cubs are going oh look mom oh look and that mother's going no this is time for sleeping but yes it does tell the story I'm afraid it tells the story of the people waking the lions yes the story of an hired lion what is um can you sense now that we're on the lions we're back to Africa so what um what took you to Africa you had you had studied photography and then Africa how did that happen that's that's a good question so when I was a child um you know all American children are given teddy bears right that's the ubiquitous you know little cuddly animal um I did not have a teddy bear I had um actually you can see her on the couch and then in the back really in the right shoulder yes there's a you can see a whale on a pillow and then in this side of that is a little red something I see I was I was given a knit elephant and her name is Ellie and I used to sleep with her and she's here today with me and I developed very young this wonderful love of Africa I also had a children's book that had a propaganda story in it and that that story was about a little boy wouldn't let his mother wash behind his ears and so he went to bed with dirty ears in the middle of the night the calico dog and foot of his bed gets up flaps his ears and the little boy wakes up and says where are you going and says I'm flying around the world and the little boy says please please can I come with you it's like okay he climbs in the back of the calico dog and they fly off to Africa and there they are and he looks down and he sees a mother elephant with her baby in the river and she's washing the baby and he says let's go down and he says please can I play with your baby and she says oh no your ears are too dirty the same thing happens when he sees a hippo no no your ears are too dirty so in the morning he he lets his mother wash behind his ears but those those images of these wild animals when I was quite young and I went and then I had the opportunity to teach the animal training work I was doing in in southern Africa different countries and was invited over to teach at safari safari lodges and things and then I began to have the opportunity to take people over on small safaris and photographed while I was doing all of that so how do you get how how do you get the job of animal safari leader where is the what did you know what were your credentials for that yes so I would call the credentials following your dreams you know and following your heart and I had desperately wanted to go to Botswana and met a woman whose sister lived there and had a difficult horse and at that point I was I was training horses and working with problems and I said I'll come and I came and it was Christmas time which of course in Botswana is not the best time to go because it can be incredibly hot and the women had to go off to Johannesburg to have Christmas with her father I couldn't stay at her house I was staying at a really dusty campgrounds and I gave a demo of this horsework that I was doing and I said is there anybody here who'd be willing to put me up and a woman said yes you can stay with us and she helped me take care of help help work with that woman's and then not long after that she and her husband moved to Namibia and he was a pilot a bush pilot who worked for wilderness safaris and she worked in the office part time and they they said look um can we get you back over here this is like later on to teach a safari uh teach um classes on this with work was called t-touch or telling to touch and we can't people can't afford to pay very much they'd pay like twenty dollars for a class and that's great but it didn't pay my airfare to get there and she said but we'll put you on a on a fly in safari in between so you teach this weekend then you go fly five days to safari camps and then you teach again and I said I'm in and um and then they gave me tour operator rates so I was able to bring people back they would organize the safaris in different camps um and away we away we went wow what a wonderful thing to have unfold for you yes I was really fortunate what man how long did you so you have been to many countries in Africa how long did you stay well I mean I went then I came back and went and I came back I mean it was it was um you know usually relatively you know one two weeks maybe three weeks or something like that I did some earth watch projects over there um and I I I did a fairly extended tour you know maybe a month I'm not sure through Zimbabwe and southern Africa south Africa um teaching teaching these workshops went back to Swaziland and taught some clinics there taught in Namibia so I um yeah I I I learned some skills and people over there wanted somebody to go teach and at that time there was nobody else and I said hey I'm I'm your person so so you brought your camera with you apparently yeah did you start taking wildlife was that your first wildlife photography that's a good question um I mean I had been using my camera by then that was back in the 90s and in the 80s as when I had started to go take some courses at Cabrio College because I'd gone to Yosemite with my my husband and kids and took some what I was impressed with photos and thought gee maybe if I learned something I can do even better and um and began to study and and uh really really understood you know that was in the film days and and how to take an image out of the camera and actually turn it into something of beauty and something that told the story um but I I'm not sure um I think Africa was probably the beginning of my my wildlife um my wildlife photos fabulous well that was a great place to start did you have one really beautiful photo that I hope we can show it's a plane and there are zebras and elephants on the plane and possibly other animals and in the distance it's kind of blue and then the distance is like a twister like a really skinny I think it's an award-winning photo was do you remember how did you have to be there at that perfect moment um that was that's um in Atosha National Park in Namibia and the location in the park is called the Atosha Pan which is a a large I guess an ancient lake but it's um white clay very dusty and you know I mentioned that I had the opportunity to take people on safari but that wasn't enough so I would sometimes I would go and visit my friends and rent a vehicle and take somebody with me who could be my navigator and because we're driving on the other side of the road and I would go to um you know I might go to Atosha I might go to a few camps on my own just just drive and um I don't remember exactly which trip that was but you know I took workshops I also took some workshops in Santa Fe on um you know photography and I remember seeing some beautiful work there and realizing that it's a combination of having the equipment having the preparation which may be learning about your subject learning how to use your equipment having the opportunity to go to the location and then having the universe come and cooperate with you and that's what happened for that particular image did you have to wait a long time to get that moment did you sit there for a long while waiting for the perfect thing I have no that's a long time ago I have I um spoke with another photographer once and he said that something like what you've just said and so he always had a camera with him he had one in his car always under the front seat and he had one in his pocket you know a small one and he got amazing pictures because something happened just then he was there is does that happen for you that way um or do you stalk the animals I both I mean I wouldn't use stalk as a search yes but it let's put it this way I um I haven't been doing it lately but then I the last couple of years I um I had injured my shoulder and so that impacted my ability to take photos it impacted my ability to do everything and then I had surgery um but prior to that I always had my camera on the car with me and um sometimes something was happening you know it's like I might be on west cliff drive or going home and all of a sudden there's something happening out there or there's um I would hear that there was a dead whale in the kelp and I would go over and there was a couple there and they were had red jackets said tow boat on the back and I started to talk to them and they were going to tow they had been asked to tow this carcass offshore and that has led to a number of other incident situations with the same couple um tow they towed a gray whale this um this year and um and so that you know if I didn't have my camera with me I wouldn't have I wouldn't have started that whole conversation but it it's really helps to also know the know the behavior of the species that you want to photograph and know the season so if you want to photograph sandhill cranes they're going to be in the central valley in the fall you know so if you go there in June you're not going to find them so it it's a combination things so you have sort of a plan but you're always prepared like thomas jefferson the more unprepared the luckier I get you're you're you're almost always prepared there are certainly times I have not been prepared have you missed us missed something because of that have you missed the one that got away um I can think of two situations and I'm not sure I would have gotten decent photos but one um it was very clear I was going to town in the evening to an event at the museum of art and history was uh and it was like an oceans um exhibition it was the opening and I remember as I got into my vehicle I thought I don't need my my camera with me it's nighttime never do that so I went I went to the the opening I enjoyed myself and I came home and I'm driving up a private road in the dark snow lights anywhere and I look in my headlights and there are two juvenile mountain lines and I'm going camera no camera and so I just stopped I turned my engine off I left my headlights on and they looked at me and went oh no what do we do what do we do and one ran across the road that way and the other said I don't know mom and and turned around and went back and so I just sat there and I thought well that's not going to last forever because they've now gone separate ways and as I waited I could see um the eye shine of the cat that it's gone back where it come from and then below it I could see another set of eyes and I went oh that's interesting and then I went my phone and at that time because we don't have cell coverage out here my phone wasn't even on so I turned it on and when the screen came on it lit up my face and at that moment they could tell what I was and where I was the juvenile ran across and then mom got up and just kind of looked at me like okay and trundled across the road and I got a photograph with my camera with my phone it looks like a raccoon so that that image is up here oh I would like to get you a chance to redeem yourself with the picture that you got at the um at the Anio Nuevo of the baby elephant seal can you talk about that it's just the the baby that was being born uh-huh that you know I guess somebody somebody made a comment recently on some of the images I posted on Facebook and and you know said what a great job I had done and I don't remember what the images were and I said and lucky and sometimes you know you just get incredibly lucky and again there's a bit of good fortune it's just maybe a little different than luck um I have a a cousin who is a docent at Anio Nuevo and they have a I guess it's a fundraiser for the friends of Anio Nuevo or something like that every January and she has invited me to come and you get to go out and instead of going from place to place with the docent you get to stay at one of the viewing stations and um I done that a few times and I got to stay at this viewing station and she had to leave feel so bad for her and the next thing I realized people are looking over here and there's this this female elephant seal who's giving birth right in front of us facing in the correct direction so we can actually see the birth of her her baby so yeah it was it was pretty special it was very special it isn't that doesn't happen I mean they obviously they have babies that's a regular deal but usually not where people see it well yes and no I mean if you've been anybody who's been to Anio Nuevo um during the elephant seal season the beaches are just plastered with these great big bodies and you know moms are popping all over the place and but you know there might be 300 yards or 500 yards that way or there might be in a crush of um you know crush of seals and um it's I don't know how often it happens that the mother is placed in front of the viewing station with nothing else obstructing the view so that is amazing I went there for a shoot once and they are there are so many of them and they're all sandy and at first as we walked toward them I was thinking well where are they they're kind of blended they're so big you think they're a dune it's the best out there that that's why they have that's why they have kinds with you so you know I had two rangers with me and they had to weigh an elephant seal and I was there for that and that was crazy I mean they are not amenable so um let's talk about marine life now since we're on the elephant seal trail I I read that you had been shooting whales in in Tonga and got to swim with or maybe I don't know if you got to but it happened that you were swimming with a uh competitive group of whales and it was sort of dangerous can you describe I've seen that in movies but can you describe what that means and what the what's happening and how you got so close okay so I have been swimming as I said earlier um with the humpback whales in the Dominican Republic um waters of the Dominican Republic for about 20 years and it's it's um a similar but different program than in Tonga it's very well regulated and it's open ocean so um there's a there's a bank you know which is fairly shallow water 30 to 100 feet deep out in the open ocean which means there's no islands nearby um so the water is rougher um than in near shore waters and um the visibility sometimes it's not that great so we're not allowed to get in the water with competitive groups in the Dominican in Dominican waters in Tonga you are allowed to do that and there you're swimming it's an archipelago of these beautiful green islands and so it's it's interior waters and it's calmer and usually but not always the visibility is quite good and this competitive group is basically um as far as we understand there's a female in it and then there's like two or more males and in Tonga there are very often seven ten whales males and they're all competing for the opportunity to escort this female and since nobody has ever seen humpback whales mate we don't know how that how that interfaces with this whole process but we're allowed to get in the water with the competitive groups and I'd always wanted to know what was going on underwater because when you see them there's a lot of surface activity and sometimes one male you know lashes out at another or rides him lots of blowing and lots of posturing and then they'll go beneath the surface and it's quiet and you have no idea what's going on so I specifically went to Tonga to get that opportunity and what they do because we also are really large and they move really fast is and there's no way that even the best swimmer can keep up with fast swimming whales is we find a competitive group the captain decides that this is an appropriate it's good and then we're dropped in the water sort of in front of them when they're beneath the surface so they're not at the surface at that point where it could be quite dangerous they're beneath the surface and they're interacting with one another and you have just a few moments to see and photograph what's going on and boom then they're gone so yeah it's it's pretty exciting but it's also um you know some of my photos have some bubbles in them that are not from the whales that are from the faster swimmers who are ahead of me but it's it's pretty exciting I find once you put your eye in a viewfinder you now have tunnel vision you're not seeing what's around you anymore can you how do you and in the water it's dark there's all kinds of things going on there and all sorts of images like action around you how do you stay safe in a situation where you're kind of focused on getting a picture called having good situational awareness um it's so in a situation like that with the competitive group and when we always have a guide in the water so that's and even in the silver bank we always have a guide in the water and it's their job to to to keep us safe you know to to to know that and I've done this so long that I I understand a lot of the behavior myself but um there there's a process of you know moving the camera up and looking over the top and then looking back in again and if you see something that's coming towards you you know then figuring out what to do and whales humpback whales um are are not aggressive generally I mean they don't go out of their way to hurt people and they generally don't go out of the way to touch us I mean I just saw a video yesterday of a I forget where it was taken maybe in Australia of a very curious humpback whale that was spy hopping where it brings its head out of the water and it inadvertently bumped the the boat and cracked the wind the window on it there's happened to be safety glass but that's very rare for them to actually touch touch the boats they come up and they they've got a very good spatial sense in fact except in the competitive groups or the mothers and calves they don't usually touch each other they're they're they're in close they may be in close proximity but they're not like dolphins who may wrap their flippers together and you know really really engage in physical contact so um to me in terms of quote unquote danger with humpback whales is the calves because the calves are still learning they're learning how to use their bodies and they're learning um and they're a little clumsy and um and they can be a little naughty so I've been bumped in the in the legs by a calf that came through and just kind of swished its flute and I remember one time when that happened and I asked our guide what I had done wrong and he said you didn't get out of the way okay um which which is a case you know initially we're told don't move because the whales know where you are but with these calves sometimes they know exactly where you are they they don't usually try and bump you but they try and just kind of you know might switch their flukes as a way of going in and in I did have one really interesting encounter with a calf and this was actually a number of years ago where um our guide was up ahead closer to the the mother and the calf and the rest of us were in a line um maybe 15 feet behind him maybe I don't know I lose track I can't tell the distance but far enough back and the next thing without I didn't see how it happened but this calf is coming from behind and underneath me and it is I'm looking through my camera and I see this face and this eye staring straight at me and this peck fin is just missing my head and then I just keep shooting and there's the ventral pleats is the belly and then the calf taps my camera with this flute and I'm going okay that was interesting and then I thought well yeah that was interesting but I'm going to go move to the other end of the line I don't know what I thought that would do but I didn't fool the calf I get down there I'm now at the opposite end of the line this calf comes through does the same thing really quickly and picks my camera up out of the water with its flute and then sets it back down again so it was like it had it had tested this this odd thing and they they seem to be interested because the camera's got a big dome port it's like a um a glass or plexiglass like a mirror so they can even see their reflection in it I don't know what it's like to them whether they it's a giant eye or whether they just go what is that strange appendage and the first time it's like tested it and the second time it went oh yeah I know how heavy it is we can just do this so that's a rare experience but it was um it was pretty funny oh so a playful whale that kind of dangerous and fun now I think this is interesting that you've told that the whale seemed to know you tracked you back oh there there she is she's got something I like um what whales that whale knows you but you know other whales can you talk about working to help to identify the whales with the allied whale project yes so when I first started um well before I actually swam out of the the solar bank I had um gone to um gone to Maui and done an earth watch project with a researcher their name Adam Pack and this is back in the film days and they were taking fluke ID photos and then putting them in you know a binder um look the pages in it and every time you got a new fluke photo you would go through this binder and look to see if you could find a match because that's a very non-invasive way of gathering information on who these whales are what they do where they are at different times and I was really intrigued with that I just I mean not there's something about knowing an animal personally that's very different than it just being a generic whale so um when I got out to the silver bank and now thankfully we had digital digital cameras um I wanted to know you know if anybody was gathering fluke ID photos and it turned out there wasn't really much going on and a woman came over one day and introduced herself she actually introduced herself to the person who was in um leading the trips that I was going on and asked him if he was interested in sharing fluke photos and he said I'll go talk to Jodi so she connected me with the folks that allied whale and at that point I started doing it seriously taking my fluke photos gathering from the crew on my boat gathering from you know kept them on another boat um anybody who was willing to give me their photos and sending them to to allied whale who would put them in their catalog and in the meantime I had made a a journey to the east coast because these whales are part of the north atlantic population and some of them feed um the stalagm bank out the coast of massachusetts um province town and gloucester massachusetts some of them feed off a main some of them feed in isla and norway and I I went and I met people in province town and gloucester and bar harbor main and made the connections with them and then I would send them some of my fluke photos because some of them know the whales in their head that visit because these whales have it's called site fidelity they come back to the same feeding area each season and um and it became very exciting and we started to learn things that might not have been known otherwise for instance we know that humpback whales and most of this is from the the feeding grounds calf every two to three years but what we don't know is how many calves are born down on the breeding calving grounds on the tropical waters and the calves don't make it alive up to the so if we see a female with a calf on the calving grounds and then we see where the calf the next year and we share that information it turns out the first calf didn't make it all the way it died somewhere along the way the second calf got there now they know that this whale had calves two years in a row calves two years in a row but that information would have would have gone unnoticed before staying so have you have you found other things have you been able to document other things with your camera that were previously unknown to scientists yes but if I may before I get to that question sure um I I've taken you know uh because I think it's it's very connected to Santa Cruz is that um a a friend and colleague Ted Cheeseman has developed a um software that is able to identify do do a really good job of matching flukes and so he's developed a citizen science project called happy whale and um when I'm in Monterey Bay when I'm in Antarctica when I'm in Norway anywhere in the world I will submit my fluk photos to happy whale and then you know we get instant feedback this is whale so-and-so and then you can go on the website and you can see where else this whale has been cited and how many times it's been it's been cited um and so that's that that's very rewarding and I I'm sure that Ted is coming up with all kinds of interesting information some of it has to do with matches where you don't expect the whale to go to a different calving ground than the rest of the whales in that population as far as my own um sort of discoveries and and this is maybe minor in terms of the the fluke information but I believe it was about two maybe three years ago 2018 I guess uh in Monterey in Monterey Bay we um had two humpback whales that did something that had never been observed before the day before killer whales had taken a gray whale calf and um boats had gotten there they didn't see the kill but they were there while the feeding was going on and I went I wasn't there I went out the next day and we went to the same location to see if the whales were still feeding because it can take and lo and behold there were a couple of killer whales and um and then they and and then they left oh and the carcass was there and then the killer whales took off and our captain um took off to follow them and the captain on our other boat said radioed her and said you know there are two humpbacks here with this carcass so Nancy Black who's our captain turned around and went back and for the next 12 minutes we watched these two humpback whales in investigating this carcass they would spy hop they would come up backwards they would reach out with their peck fins they would kind of move their flukes towards it um they appeared to be touching it with their sides touching it with their heads when it was quite it was quite amazing and um I ended up doing a scientific paper with um with Nancy Black as a co-author and Fred Sharp who has um did all the seminal work on the bubble net feeding whales up in Alaska and in the process of doing that we discovered that one of the two whales had been there the day before when the killer whales are feeding so watch that going on and oftentimes what the humpbacks will do is they'll they'll interfere you know they'll they'll get aggressive towards the killer whales as if they don't want them to do that so then came back the next day and brought a friend and they um they checked out this carcass and then we were able to to learn that both of these whales have been seen in breeding grounds in Mexico but they're probably male they've never been seen with calves they've been seen like you know 60 90 times a piece so you know we've got we've got a whole picture of who these whales are who are actually investigating that carcass interesting I think elephants do that too with their when an elephant dies they they hang around and check it out they do and the biggest difference here is that one we don't often see humpbacks with a dead calf of their own but this was of the different species and that was the part that has never been seen before in the wild interesting so you mentioned Antarctica that cannot be an easy place to shoot I saw your picture to a penguin that looks really difficult what is it like to shoot in such a hostile I mean it's underwater that's kind of hostile but that's really extreme how do you doesn't your camp what do you have to do to keep your camera from freezing unfortunately Antarctica is not that cold anymore I'm too bad actually the first thing is you don't go in the in the middle of winter okay that's when researchers are down there but and when I have been there it's been their fall and the weather's a little bit warmer but you dress very warmly you charge your batteries and you know you keep your spare batteries inside your clothes so that they're warm and you know you've got good gloves hard to photograph with with the right kind of gloves on so you may get cold fingers and you know as with all of these I said not all but a lot of the things that I do I'm I'm not just going on my own in part because they're expensive to get to Antarctica anymore and it's really nice to have somebody else to the preparation and you're out there on a very large ship that's nice and warm and cozy inside and then you get Zodiacs you dress properly for it and you go out and you stay out for you know several hours at a time you get a chance to make landings you know walk around see what's going on and you know some the weather I've been several times sometimes it's foggy sometimes it's snowing sometimes it's windy sometimes it's sunny and warm so you just kind of get used to dealing with the elements well you went more than once so it must not be that bad I never thought I would go more than once but it's like the whales it's a little bit addictive is there anywhere you have haven't been that you would like to go to take photographs this year I was supposed to go to Svalbard in Norway it's a separate island last I was it just last year I was able to go to Franz Joseph land which is as far north as I've ever been that's a Russian archipelago and that was I was really fascinating I'm really glad I went but there wasn't quite as much wildlife there were a lot of birds we didn't see we saw whales as we were coming back going through the barren sea and we did see polar bears but I would like to go to Svalbard and there are bears polar bears there and arctic foxes and even the wildflowers arctic wildflowers are just incredibly beautiful and you know at this point it's difficult to get photographs that haven't been taken before and I've just been really really drawn to parts of the world that are not as as heavily visited and unfortunately COVID interrupted that trip and we'll see if we can go next year is there a picture you haven't taken that you want to take yes do I know what it is no you know I mean I am seeing a lot of photographs these days that other photographers are taking that are quite extraordinary and it's it's like the bar keeps being raised there's a lot of drone images that are are are extraordinary winning in competitions there are some that take probably more patience than I have you know birds doing extraordinary things so it's one of the things I like about whales because they're they're there and they're large easy to easy to follow them and and there are only so many things they do but it's it's also why being able to work on research projects with them is a great you know it's a great compliment because I can I can make my photographs actually work to help the species they can they can help teach people and get people engaged and and enthusiastic about protecting them so what is the what is the message you hope you share in your photos in your photos what do you hope people learn from you I hope that my love of of this planet and my other species who inhabit this planet with us comes through in my images you know the animals I want to say they can't speak for themselves or if they do we can't understand them and I hope that with my images and I try and I try and educate people so it's not just oh here's a whale breaching but it's like oh this is this is Angel Wing and this is her calf halo and they came over to visit our boat today and you know uh halo breached a number of times and we see that same behavior in the silver bank where um we call out taking the calf for a walk in the afternoon you know and being able to share that information and that this calf is is probably you know on the on the cabin grounds that hasn't migrated yet so it has to be fit to make this very long thousand miles thousands of miles swim but it still needs to be fit and it's it's just a baby so um you know I I hope to I hope to give people a window into the lives of these animals so that they will they will care as well and without you know we don't care about them we can't do much to protect them which we definitely need to do. Thank you Jodi Frediani for sharing your photos with us and your thoughts and all your work to conserve our beautiful planet. Thank you so much for having been my pleasure. You're so welcome. If you viewers would like to see more of Jodi's wonderful photos visit jodi frediani.com. Thanks for watching joining me now. Good night.