What We Do

Marine Mammal Conservation Through the Arts (MMCTA) is a nonprofit organization founded by Bryant Austin, an artist with a background in marine mammal conservation. Since 2002 Austin and his volunteer team have worked on the Monterey Bay and in Tonga producing imagery effective enough for a large scale international campaign to raise public awareness on issues affecting marine mammal species.

Our primary goal is to produce and exhibit life size photographic imagery of whales. These images will be featured internationally in high traffic public spaces in an effort to reach a broader audience who have yet to be inspired and concerned for these creatures.

Our approach to producing compositions of whales effective enough to inspire an international audience is to dedicate entire seasons with them annually and work at their pace and level of interest in us. We work with, and provide support for marine mammal biologists and spend hundreds of hours in the field every year to document the full spectrum of animal behavior and environmental conditions. Austin strives to create imagery of whales and dolphins that affect viewers on a universal subconscious level.

Tonga Field Work

In 2005 MMCTA launched its pilot project Whales in Public Spaces. We began developing the methods and techniques to produce life-size photographs of whales in collaboration with whale biologist Libby Eyre.

Since then we have spent nearly two entire seasons, a total of six months in the field, working with the area V South Pacific Humpback Whales. MMCTA collected fluke IDs, recorded song, and filmed 30 hours of underwater behavior with vocalizations. Most importantly MMCTA developed the methods for capturing life-size photographs of whales.

Producing life-size photographs of whales requires both appropriate technology and exceptional whale behavior. In order for the camera to capture sufficient information, Bryant must be within 2 meters of the whale. For such close encounters to occur Bryant and his assistants must approach the whales in a gentle and considerate way. Entire seasons are spent to maximize the possibility of meeting those special whales who choose to have close interactions, gliding within feet of Bryant and allowing his camera to capture the highest clarity and tonal range achievable. For full-body life-size photographs Bryant takes a series of photographs along the whale’s body, which are later digitally stitched into one photograph.

Whales in Public Spaces

Our Whales in Public Spaces campaign is large-scale multi media event that bypasses main stream media outlets, going directly to the people. Our target audience are individuals who have no interest or concern for whales; who have never had a reason to feel any other way. It is our goal to fulfill a need that has not been met in the four decades of the whale conservation movement: to effectively inspire change from within whaling nations with no cost or effort externalized to the viewer.

Our exhibit will provide a visceral experience where the viewer will take in true size of the whale with all of the intricate detail and texture revealed, providing an immediacy and sensorial reality for powerful psychological impact. Despite the scale of our envisioned works reaching dimensions up to fifteen feet high by ninety feet long, it is the whales’ eye and its varied expressions that are central to Austin’s vision of inspiring change from within whaling nations.

Whale song and vocalizations will be reproduced to their true decibel and frequency range using concert quality sound system that produces sound that is not heard but physically felt below 15 Hertz.

Our past field work was almost entirely funded by Bryant Austin. MMCTA and Austin have dedicated 2007 to raising sufficient resources for the “phase II” process of our work. This involves preparations for 36 months of field work over the next five years working with five whale species utilizing the state of the art Hasselblad H3D 39 mega pixel camera. This phase will be entirely funded through the sale of Bryant Austin’s very small exclusive limited edition whale photographs featured at www.studiocosmos.com.

In addition, MMCTA is seeking foundation and donor support to build up our infrastructure in preparation for organizing and initiating the Whales in Public Spaces campaign within whaling nations. Coinciding with our public space exhibitions will be the development and expansion of our educational website. It will be presented in formats for children and adults in multiple languages.