The Gulf is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s whale and dolphin species, one of which (the Rice’s whale) is endemic to our waters. This presentation provides listeners with stories that connect visitable sites along the Gulf coast with the life histories of individual cetaceans to share with their networks to support science communication efforts about marine mammals in the Gulf. The purpose of communicating stories that explicitly associate a visitable site with a personal history of a whale or dolphin is to bring the otherwise-cryptic species into the realm of the known and the familiar (e.g. the lactating female Rice’s whale who buried in Fort De Soto Park, FL in 2009). These stories are concise, non-fiction pieces informed by marine mammal stranding records, whaling logbooks, local newspaper archives, first-hand accounts, and scientific publications woven together to foster local connections between humans and cetaceans. This talk highlights one or two stories per Gulf state and prioritizes stories according to the following: contemporary impact on the region, impact on the broader (including scientific) community, relative rarity of the species, and accounts from local sources. The stories shared in this presentation are designed to empower people to connect to the Gulf’s cetaceans and to consider the Gulf a shared habitat, and success has been measured and evaluated informally by engagement from the learners and knowledge retained between visits. This talk and its associated materials have been used in story-telling with all ages from pre-K through gray and are designed to be accessible to anyone interested in the whales and dolphins in the Gulf.