Learning Session 9: What Whales are Saying
Online learning sessions using dialogue to explore the workings, developments, (im)possibilities, and emerging insights of diverse approaches and praxes for Co-creation with the More-than-Human world
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The 9th learning session of the Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox in December 2025 on What Whales are Saying explored he work of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), led by Dr. David Gruber, Founder & President of the initiative and Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York.
Project CETI brings together over 50 scientists across disciplines—including AI, linguistics, robotics, and marine biology—to decode the communication of sperm whales in the Eastern Caribbean. Using advanced machine learning and non-invasive sensing technologies, the project is working toward understanding whether whale communication constitutes a form of language and what it would mean to translate it.
The session explored not only the scientific and technical dimensions of this work, but also its ethical, legal, and philosophical implications—particularly in relation to Rights of Nature and the possibility of whales being recognized as communicative subjects with standing.
What follows is a synthesis of key questions, insights, and cross-cutting threads from the dialogue.
🌿 Learning Session 9 (December 2025) — Synthesis
What Whales are Saying, with Dr. David Gruber (Project CETI)
What changes when communication across species moves from speculation to evidence—and what becomes possible, or necessary, when another species can no longer be treated as silent?
1. What are we actually discovering about whale communication?
From sound to structure, not immediate meaning
The work of Project CETI does not begin with translating whale sounds into human language, but with identifying whether there is structure, pattern, and repeatability in those sounds that would indicate something like language. This involves analyzing vast datasets of “codas” (click sequences) to detect patterns that resemble elements such as phonetics, syntax, or contextual variation.
Dialects, clans, and cultural variation
Different whale groups appear to use distinct patterns, suggesting the presence of dialects tied to specific clans. These differences are socially learned rather than genetically encoded, pointing toward the existence of culture—shared communication systems transmitted across generations.
A threshold crossed, but not yet understood
While structure is increasingly evident, meaning remains largely unknown. The step from identifying patterns to understanding what they signify is substantial, particularly given that whales inhabit a sensory world fundamentally different from our own.
🌱 Seed
The first breakthrough is not understanding whales—it is realizing that something structured, shared, and persistent is being expressed.
2. How do you approach translation without projecting human assumptions?
Letting patterns emerge without human bias
A deliberate choice has been made to train AI models directly on whale vocalizations, rather than using human language as a reference. This allows patterns to emerge from the data itself, reducing the risk of forcing whale communication into human linguistic categories.
Encountering a fundamentally different sensory world
Whales perceive and navigate through sound in a three-dimensional aquatic environment. This raises the possibility that their communication encodes information in ways that do not align with human concepts such as objects, sequences, or discrete symbols.
Translation as partial and situated
Even if translation becomes possible, it is unlikely to resemble a direct conversion into human language. What may emerge instead are partial mappings—correlations between sounds, contexts, and behaviors—that allow for interpretation without full equivalence.
🌱 Seed
The deeper the difference, the less translation becomes conversion—and the more it becomes an ongoing negotiation with the unknown.
3. What has the process of building this work revealed so far?
Progress is slow, iterative, and data-intensive
Understanding whale communication requires analyzing enormous volumes of data, where distinguishing signal from noise is an ongoing challenge. Progress is incremental and depends on sustained, long-term effort rather than rapid breakthroughs.
Working at the edge of current capabilities
The project operates at the limits of existing AI and machine learning systems. While these tools can detect patterns, they are not yet capable of reliably assigning meaning in a non-human communication system.
Designing research that does not interfere
A strong emphasis is placed on non-invasive methods, including passive acoustic monitoring and “gentle robotics.” This constrains the type and speed of data collection, but ensures that research does not disrupt whale behavior.
🌱 Seed
The constraint is not only technical—it is learning how to study another species without reshaping it in the process.
4. What ethical questions emerge when we begin to “listen”?
Access and control of translation technologies
If meaningful interpretation becomes possible, the question of who has access becomes critical. Open access may accelerate understanding and protection, but also increases the risk of misuse.
From protection to potential exploitation
Making whales more intelligible could expose them to new forms of harm—whether through tourism, military use, or other extractive applications. Understanding does not automatically lead to protection.
The risk of premature certainty
There is a significant risk of over-interpreting partial findings, assigning meaning where there is still ambiguity. Acting on misunderstood signals could distort rather than represent whale communication.
Ethics as foundational, not secondary
Ethical considerations are embedded in the design of the project itself, shaping how data is collected, interpreted, and shared.
🌱 Seed
The moment we begin to understand, we also become accountable for how that understanding is used.
5. What becomes possible if we succeed in understanding whales?
From observation to interaction
If elements of whale communication can be reliably interpreted, the relationship shifts from observing behavior to engaging with signals—opening the possibility, however partial, of response rather than one-sided analysis.
Strengthening legal recognition and protection
Demonstrating structured communication and cultural variation provides stronger grounds for legal arguments around rights, personhood, and protection—moving from ethical concern to evidentiary claim.
Reframing participation in governance
A more far-reaching implication is that whales could, in some mediated way, be represented in decision-making processes based on their own communication patterns, rather than solely through human proxies.
Challenging human exclusivity
Perhaps most fundamentally, this work challenges the assumption that complex communication—and meaningful expression—is uniquely human, requiring a rethinking of how agency and intelligence are distributed across species.
🌱 Seed
Once communication becomes undeniable, exclusion becomes a choice rather than an assumption.
6. How does this intersect with law and Rights of Nature?
From evidence to legal argument
Demonstrating structured communication and cultural variation strengthens the case that whales are not only sentient, but communicative beings. This supports legal arguments for rights, shifting from moral claims to evidence-based recognition.
Collaboration with legal innovation
Through collaboration with NYU’s More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) program, Project CETI explores how scientific findings can inform legal frameworks around personhood, rights of nature, and enforceable protections.
From protection toward representation
A more far-reaching implication is the possibility that whales could be represented in legal or governance processes in ways that are grounded—however indirectly—in their own communication systems.
🌱 Seed
When communication becomes demonstrable, exclusion becomes harder to justify.
7. What remains uncertain or unresolved?
Limits of translation
It remains unclear whether whale communication can ever be meaningfully translated into human terms, or whether it will remain partially opaque due to fundamental differences in perception and cognition.
Speed of science vs urgency of threats
The timescales required for rigorous understanding are long, while the pressures on whale populations are immediate—creating a gap between knowledge production and action.
Implications not yet fully understood
Even partial success in translation could have far-reaching consequences—for governance, ethics, and human–more-than-human relations—that are not yet fully anticipated.
🌱 Seed
We may reach the limits of understanding long before we reach the limits of implication.
Cross-cutting insight threads
Structure → Meaning (in progress)
The identification of structured communication marks a critical threshold, but translating that structure into meaning remains an open and complex challenge.
Listening → Responsibility (escalating)
As the ability to listen improves, so does the ethical responsibility to act carefully and avoid harm.
Understanding → Exposure (tension)
Making whales more intelligible may strengthen protection, but also increases the risk of new forms of exploitation.
Science → Governance (emerging)
Scientific discoveries are beginning to intersect with legal and governance frameworks, particularly in relation to rights and representation.
Closing
These sessions are not designed to arrive at fixed answers, but to surface how different approaches work in practice. Each conversation reveals not only how and where they hold, but also the tensions and questions that remain unresolved—and that continue to invite further inquiry.
Over time, these syntheses form a growing body of insights into what co-creation with the more-than-human world might require, across contexts and practices.
The Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox is a collaboration between The Repatterning Collective and Kincentric Leadership.
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