Bio

Santa Cruz-based internationally recognized, award-winning photographer and whale researcher Jodi Frediani has been swimming with and photographing humpback whales on the Silver Bank off the coast of the Dominican Republic for over 20 years. In addition, she has been photographing the marine life of Monterey Bay for the past fifteen years, while taking time off for photographic adventures to Africa, Alaska, Argentina, Antarctica, Brazil, Franz Josef Land, Mongolia, Norway, Siberia, Svalbard, Thailand and Tonga. Her work has appeared in numerous national and international publications, including the BBC’s “Nature’s Weirdest Events”, Carl Safina’s National Geographic blog, “Ocean Views”, and National Geographic’s book, World From Above. In addition to photographing wildlife in its many forms and habitats, Frediani is engaged in whale research through several fluke ID projects both here and abroad. Along with her co-authors, she published her first scientific paper in 2020, entitled Postmortem Attractions: Humpback Whales Investigate the Carcass of a Killer Whale-Depredated Gray Whale Calf. Since 2021, she has been part of the WhaleSETI team conducting field research in southeast Alaska on humpback whale playback studies and was co-author on two recent papers, Interactive Bioacoustic Playback as a Tool for Detecting and Exploring Nonhuman Intelligence: “Conversing” with an Alaskan Humpback Whale and Humpback Whales Blow Poloidal Vortex Bubble Rings. She recently published an anthology entitled, Wild Monterey Bay, a storytelling project of people’s most memorable wildlife encounters. The volume is richly illustrated with her photos. You can check out her photography at www.jodifrediani.com and her book at www.wildmontereybay.com.