Being a whale researcher is not always the most glamourous job. Often scientists have to get dirty in order to collect the data they need to better understand whale populations. A team of marine mammal researchers, including the Marine Mammal Research Program’s own Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard, understand this all too well! They spent part of the summers of 2016 and 2017 collecting “snot” samples from humpback whales in order to monitor their health.
Unlike humans, the respiratory tract of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) is not connected to the mouth. When a cetacean breathes, it comes to the surface and releases the air within its lungs in what we commonly refer to as a blow. Blows contain microorganisms, such as bacteria, suspended in droplets of mucus- in other words, whale “snot”! As the exhaled breath only passes through the respiratory tract, the blows generally do not contain bacteria from the mouth. As in humans, the respiratory system is one of the first places cetaceans can get an infection or a disease.
Ocean Wise/NOAA/SR3 By collecting blow samples from a drone, researchers can monitor the health of humpback whale populations.
With help from a hexacopter drone, the field team (Drs. John Durban, Holly Fearnbach, Michael Moore, and Lance Barrett-Lennard) collected blow samples from 26 humpback whales in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and near Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Samples were collected by flying the drone two to four metres above the whale’s blowhole, and collecting a blow sample when the whale exhaled. To avoid confounding results, samples of water were also collected from the sea surface nearby, to compare the composition of microorganisms found in humpback blows to those found in seawater. Blow and seawater samples were analyzed in the lab using DNA amplification and sequencing techniques to reveal the different microorganisms present.
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