by Mirra-Margarita Ianeva

Science has never existed in a vacuum. Its development is tied to the histories of capitalism, colonialism and military expansion. Many of the archival materials in Weather and the Whale testify to these relations, showing how scientific knoweldge—especially in relation to whales and the ocean—has served extractive, commercial, and imperial interests. For instance, Charles Scammon was a 19th-century whale hunter who also authored one of the first illustrated books on cetology. Similarly, M. F. Maury, a US naval officer and oceanographer, created a whale chart designed to guide whalers to abundant waters in the Pacific. In 1935, Charles Haskins Townsend, a conservation-minded zoologist, produced four whale distribution maps for the New York Zoological Society. Though positioned as tools for conservation, these maps also reflect a utilitarian view of animals as resources to be managed.

Several artists in the exhibition call attention to these legacies, asking us to reconsider how scientific practices have historically relied on systems of domination—over land, species, and people. At the same time, science itself is not static. The scientists and research featured in Weather and the Whale also reflect an increasing awareness of the moral dimensions of research and conservation.

This study guide invites you to explore these complexities, questioning the authority of naming, the legacy of scientific classification, and the values embedded in what and how we come to know.

Western Science and the Enlightenment

In her 2021 essay “Black Ecologies,” artist and researcher Imani Jacqueline Brown critiques the hierarchical structures rooted in Enlightenment thought and science—structures that enable human dominance over nature, reinforce racial inequality, and rely on separation and division as a method of understanding. As she writes: 

“Conflating phenotypical darkness with phenomenological darkness, darkness with the unknown, and the unknown with fear, Enlightened Whiteness casts a surgical light. With each shadow banished, new shadows are revealed; within each particle, smaller particles are found. Yet, the new forms of knowledge gained are half-starved.”

Brown turns instead to what she calls “Black ecologies,” syncretic and diasporic systems that acknowledge the interconnectedness of living things and support “mutual living” rather than separation:  

“Black ecologies are syncretic: Like resistance to slavery, which often germinated in the spiritual grounds of vodou, santería and candomblé, they generate systems for mutual living—living systems—by synergizing poetry and science, past and future, teachings from North, South, East and West, networking the many into the one. Black ecologies are diasporic: They spread to the rhythm of grandma’s knitting needles, weaving the world’s loving reintegration. Whatever their scale, they are expansive because they photosynthesize the wisdom of more-than-human ancestors.”

“Darkness holds a more intimate wisdom we are once again coming to sense… Dark matter is the glue that holds existence together.”

Imani Jacqueline Brown

Brown extends this critique in her work From the bottom of the borehole, we extracted Earth’s abyssal stars (2024), featured in the Weather and the Whale exhibition. 

In this work, the artist focuses on the ties between science and extractive industry in the Gulf of Mexico. The piece features an image of a rock sample taken in 1968 from the Gulf’s ocean floor during the first expedition of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP Leg 1)—a partnership between several universities and a consortium of oil and gas companies. DSDP scientists deployed drilling technologies developed for deepwater oil extraction to collect core samples of rock that could illuminate critical geological processes and provide evidence for the theory of continental drift. Since then, hundreds of expeditions have drilled thousands of boreholes in the earth’s crust. Brown invites us to consider the environmental cost of scientific knowledge.

In a related piece titled Untitled, or, They’ve been singing since the gulf was born (2025), the collective Whale Liberation Front—founded in 2024 by Imani Jacqueline Brown with musicians and composers Cory Diane and Peter J. Bowling—also focuses on the Gulf of Mexico, exploring the impact of offshore oil drilling on its soundscape and the whales that inhabit it year-round (officially known as Rice’s whales but renamed by the artists as the Gulf’s Whale).

Although the Gulf’s Whale was only designated by scientists as a distinct species in 2021, its genetic information indicates that it evolved as a separate species approximately 3 million years ago. The installation brings attention to the anthropocentric and colonial roots of the names given to the waters of the Gulf and the Rice’s whale. They also show how the abundant lifeworld of the Gulf often defies Western science, naming practices, and classifications. For years, Rice’s whales were misidentified as a population of the closely-related Bryde’s whale, a species named after the Norwegian whaler and colonizer Johan Bryde. In a map hand-painted on the wall, the artists propose alternative, non-possessive names for both the whale and the Gulf—some shared with them by Indigenous knowledge holders from Bulbancha and México.

Today, the Gulf is the source of 97% of all offshore oil and gas exploration and production in the US—an industrial activity that leaves a devastating acoustic footprint. To convey how whales might experience this industrial soundscape, the artists placed a subwoofer inside an oil drum, where it loudly blasts the sound of an airgun. Suspended inside the water is a hydrophone that detects the violent sound from the subwoofer, which is then processed in real time and played back in the gallery for visitors to hear. Projected on the water’s surface is a video composed of blended footage of the Gulf’s Whale, aerial photography documenting the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and animated GIS shapefiles of oil and gas infrastructure in the gulf.

In the clip below, Whale Liberation Front member Cory Diane explains how offshore oil and gas operations pollute the Gulf with industrial noise, and how the installation attempts to represent how whales may experience—and resist—this sonic intrusion.

REFLECT
Think about the origins of some place names you’re familiar with. Where do these names come from? Who do they commemorate?

Knowledges that Embrace Interdependence

In her work for Weather and the Whale, video and installation artist Suné Woods interrogates the assumptions and methodologies of Western science and points to alternative systems of knowledge rooted in interdependence and mutuality—among them those of the Afro-Colombian and Emberá Dobidá communities she visited during a 2024 trip to Coquí, a small coastal village on the Gulf of Tribugá in Colombia.  

Her video aquí todo está vivo documents her trip to Coquí, where she joined marine ecologist Natalia Botero-Acosta while she undertook research on the humpback whales that migrate to the area to breed. Aerial footage glides over the expansive waters of the Gulf of Tribugá, capturing the boat used by Botero-Acosta as it moves across the open sea, while humpback whales and their calves breach and disappear beneath the surface. In contrast, hand-held camera shots offer a more intimate perspective: a small boat navigating narrow waterways, sunlight refracting through mangroves rooted in riverbeds, and a trail of ants carrying leaves. Together, the footage seeks out connection between all life.

During her trip, Woods witnessed several whale biopsies. In voice over, she expresses some reservation about the scientific research process and the methods used by scientists, even when these are less invasive. In contrast to the data-driven encounter of the biopsy, she asks what it would mean to center ways of knowing that value the interdependence of species. The title, aquí todo está vivo, which translates to “everything here is alive,” reflects the perspectives of the region’s Afro-Colombian and Emberá Dobidá communities, which provide a counterpoint to the scientific research process. The video also highlights the wisdom of dreams, suggesting that nature may communicate not through instruments or metrics, but through dreams and riddles that can only be solved collectively. 

If we’re already in a harmonious or reciprocal relationship to nature, and understand ourselves as part of nature or as the whale, we operate differently—in how we eat, in how we live, in how we consume, in how we treat each other—and ask different questions. I’m not saying that science has it all wrong. Not at all. Science is doing some incredible work. But the questions one asks when one honors the ocean and honors the river and honors the whale may be very different questions.

SUNÉ WOODS

In the clip below, Woods shares her experience attending a mourning ceremony following the death of Betty, a community member, while in Coquí. She reflects on how the kinds of questions we ask shift when we understand ourselves as part of, rather than separate from, the natural world. She also talks about how she sees climate change as a spiritual crisis—an idea inspired by Ben Okri’s Tiger Work (2023), a collection of stories, essays and poems about climate change.

For insights into what marine mammals can teach us beyond the frameworks of Western scientific paradigms, see Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (2020) by Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

Collaborative Scientific Research

While Western science has long been entangled with capitalism and colonialism—and still is, as the artists discussed above show—its paradigms and methods have also shifted over time. The scientists featured in the Weather and the Whale conduct their research collaboratively, working in close dialogue with the communities affected by their work, and place ethical considerations at the forefront of their research. They actively support responsible animal research, conservation initiatives, and the development of sound, community-informed policy.

Mother-Calf Migrations from Colombia to Antarctica

Dr. Natalia Botero-Acosta, for example, works closely with the coastal community of Coquí, Colombia, to study the migratory patterns of humpback whale mother-calf pairs that travel from their breeding grounds in the Gulf of Tribugá to their feeding grounds in Antarctica. In recent years, researchers have questioned long-held assumptions about this migration. While the Gulf of Tribugá has recorded high numbers of mother-calf pairs, far fewer are observed in Antarctic feeding areas. To elucidate the cause of the discrepancy, Dr. Botero-Acosta deployed satellite tags in the Gulf in October 2023. The three tagged whales were named in honor of three women from Coquí, the village whose community provides research support. 

The fate of the tagged whales—Cruz, Eva, and Betty—provides insight into the risks faced by migrating mothers and their calves. For instance, one and very possibly two whales experienced entanglement, suggesting that this is a widespread issue for the whales making the eight-thousand mile journey from Colombia to Antarctica. 

In the clip below, Dr. Botero-Acosta discusses her research in the Gulf of Tribugá and her findings.

Acoustic Ecologies in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska

In her research on acoustic monitoring in Alaska, UCSC PhD student Chloe Lew has been working with the Native Village of Kotzebue to support local advocacy and improve stewardship of Kotzebue Sound. In 2022, Lew placed hydrophones at six sites between Cape Krusenstern and Cape Espenberg to record the vocalizations of marine species in the region. Much of the life of marine mammals occurs in a vast and dark ocean, making sound crucial for survival (communication, navigation, locating food, avoiding predators, and advertisement for breeding). By obtaining continuous underwater sound recordings, Lew can gain insight into the changing underwater environment of the sound—including the effect of sea ice loss on local marine mammals. 

For the Native Village of Kotzebue, the health of the marine ecosystem is directly tied to food sovereignty. Roughly 70% of the community’s diet comes from local fish and marine mammals—including seals, salmon, cod, beluga, trout, and king crab. But with thinning sea ice and declining ringed seal numbers, hunting and sustenance is becoming more dangerous and uncertain. The findings from this study will support the Village’s ongoing efforts to protect Kotzebue Sound and sustain its vital resources.

In the clip below, Chloe Lew discusses her research in the Sound and collaborative process of co-producing knowledge with the Native Village of Kotzebue.

DID YOU KNOW
In 1982, the United States and other whaling countries agreed to a global moratorium on commercial whaling. While this helped some whale populations to recover, marine mammals face new threats today, including sound pollution from offshore oil drilling and commercial shipping, which can cause hearing damage and loss. Sea ice helps dampen this noise, but as global warming reduces ice cover, this natural protection is disappearing.   

Credits:
Videography by John Raedeke
Installation shots by Glen Cheriton