Katherina Audley on A Gift from the Sea: The Whale That Changed Everything
Tuesday, May 19, 2026 at 7PM - Ukiah City Council Chambers

The whale showed up like a dare to Fort Bragg.
National Geographic Explorer and Noyo Center Development Director Katherin Audley tells the story of a community many of you know, and the whale that showed the way.

In 2009, a 73-foot blue whale washed ashore in Fort Bragg. When the lumber mill closed in 2002, the timber town had already begun asking what kind of community it wanted to become, and had begun dreaming of an ocean science center on the old mill site. The whale showed up like a dare. The Noyo Center for Marine Science was built from the ground up to respond to kelp forest collapse, struggling fisheries, marine mammal strandings, and to explore, discover, and connect locals and visitors alike to the vast and understudied ecosystem lying just offshore behind the Redwood Curtain. This summer, the Whale House, the first building of a future ocean science center will rise on the Noyo Headlands, where the blue whale skeleton, cared for over the past decade by a 94-year-old woman named Donna Worster, will finally be articulated for the world to see. And out of this community's deepening relationship with the sea has grown something unexpected: Kindred Coasts, a program that follows the humpback whales feeding off Fort Bragg south to their calving grounds in Guerrero, Mexico, connecting youth, scientists, and communities across two countries through a shared ocean.