The Humpback Whale Project was the first of Jupiter Research Foundation's major endeavors. The objective was to make live Humpback whale sounds available on our website both for the research community and for public enjoyment. We successfully met this objective, making these live sounds available on the Internet from 2003 to 2021. We also focused our energy on improving our software and hardware to optimize live sound quality and maximize live sound availability.

The first phase of this project was to develop and construct a series of solar powered radio buoys that would detect and wirelessly transmit the whale sounds to shore. The first of our buoys was activated in 2003, in Hawaii. Since then the buoys have evolved significantly and are more complex, more effective, and more reliable.

We moved on from moored buoys with radio transmitters to Wave Gliders® traveling to any position desired and transmitting the live audio back to shore using cell phone signals. This allowed us much better quality sound as well as other data transmission such as pictures. An added benefit of utilizing cell phone technology was the prevalence of cell towers. This meant the Wave Glider based system could be operate off the coast of most of the developed world.