How scientists are using drones to collect whale blow mucus
WATER ISN’T the only thing that comes out of a whale’s blowhole. Rather, what spurts out is a concoction of mucus, bacteria and snot of great value to scientists. And now, one researcher has discovered a new, more efficient way to collect it.
Vanessa Pirotta, a PhD candidate at Macquarie University’s Department of Biological Sciences first realised the potential of drones in the research of whales while reading about all the extravagant methods harnessed by scientists to collect these whale DNA cocktails.
“Methods to sample whale blow from free swimming whales originally used long poles with a collection device, like a petri dish, attached at the end. However, this required scientist getting within metres of large whales which can weigh as much as 80 tonnes,” she told Australian Geographic.
According to Vanessa, the only other alternative to collecting the whale blow mucus was to extract it from whales that had either stranded, in which case she says their health was compromised, or from those that were deliberately killed.
In comparison, the drone technology is a low-cost, low-risk alternative that will allow scientists to collect the mucus without putting themselves or the whales in danger.
“The drones are very small in comparison to a 12-17m whale. We found no evidence that these animals responded to drone presence. They may have known the drone was above them and didn’t respond or didn’t even know the drone was there.”
Vanessa says that the mucus she collected during these initial trials will help assess the types of bacteria living in whale lungs.
“From this we were able to compare our findings with other studies using similar methods. These findings can be used for comparison with sick whales or can be used as a long-term monitoring of population health.”
There’s also potential for the drones to be used to assess the health of other marine species. “We chose humpback whales as a study species due to their annual presence of Sydney and large numbers. Ideally, this would be great to conduct the same study on much smaller whale populations such the Southern right whale.”
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