The Biennial Conferences predate the beginning of the Society. They were a successor to the late Tom Poulter’s “Annual Conference on Biological Sonar and Diving Mammals” held at the Stanford Research Institute (formally separated from Stanford University in 1970 and now known as SRI International) in Menlo Park, California, beginning in 1964. After Tom’s passing, Ken Norris picked up the ball and instigated the First Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, hosted by UC Santa Cruz in 1975. A second Biennial followed in 1977 in San Diego, supported by the U.S. Naval Ocean Systems Center. Attendance at the first conference was about 300 and at the second 480. Following the second conference, George Harry, then Director of what is now the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, initiated discussions about forming a society to organize and run the conferences. The responses favored the idea. In 1978, Ken Norris took the major steps of preparing a “Preliminary Design of a Society of Marine Mammalogy” and forming an organizational committee (consisting of Tom Dohl, George Harry, Burney Le Boeuf, John Lilly, Ken Norris, Bill Perrin, Bill Powell and Forrest Wood, later expanded to include Bob Elsner, Bill Evans, Lou Herman and Ron Schusterman). The new society would “provide a vehicle for promoting the science of marine mammalogy.”

The committee met during the Third Biennial in Seattle in 1979 and discussed the preliminary design, proposed criteria for membership, and suggested by-laws. All was firmed up by correspondence, and at the Fourth Biennial in San Francisco in 1981, Ken presented the need and plans for a society to a meeting of those conference participants interested in forming one. The proposal was accepted by the group, and Ken was elected the first President by acclamation. Ken took the lead on confirming charter members, drafting a constitution and by-laws, and getting the Society officially incorporated. He truly was the father of the Society.