Jim Nollman

Jim Nollman was born in Boston in 1947 and graduated from Tufts University in 1969. He has been a composer of music for theater, an internationally distinguished conceptual artist, and an environmental activist. In 1973, he was commissioned to compose a Thanksgiving Day radio piece for a US national network, and recorded himself singing children’s songs with 300 turkeys. He has recorded interspecies music with wolves, desert rats, deer, elk, whales, and dolphins. He directed one of Greenpeace’s first overseas projects, at Iki Island, Japan, where fishermen were slaughtering dolphins to compensate for human overfishing. His efforts eventually resulted in the Japanese government issuing a ban on this killing practice.

He is the founder of Interspecies Inc., which sponsors research for communicating with animals through music and art. IC’s best-known field project is a 25-year communication study using live music to interact with the wild orcas who inhabit the west coast of Canada. Nollman is currently directing a project in Arctic Russia to protect the last beluga whales in Europe, and is learning how to communicate with these whales.

He is the author of several books, including the most recent, The Charged Border: Where Whales and Humans Meet. His essays are anthologized in several collections of nature writing. He is contributing editor for the largest whale site on the Internet, with 10,000 visitors a day. Jim Nollman lives on San Juan Island in the northwest corner of the USA with his wife Katy, and daughters Claire and Sasha.