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Microbes in the breath of North Atlantic right whales contain valuable information about the animals’ health, a new study has found.
Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts used drones to capture spray from the blowholes of the endangered species. They then analyzed the bacteria in the spray and connected that information with other data to gain a clearer picture of the health of individual whales.
“This is really exciting because we may have just found another way to conduct health checkups of these critically endangered whales,” says Carolyn Miller, a research associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the lead author of the study, published this month in the journal International Society for Microbial Ecology.
Experts say there are fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales remaining on the planet, with ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear adding to the threats the population faces.
The researchers at WHOI have collected 103 samples from 85 North Atlantic right whales in Cape Cod Bay, Mass., since they began using the drone technique in 2016.
It involves flying a drone carrying a petri dish above a whale until it releases a breath through its blowhole. Once the spray hits the petri dish, the drone flies back to its pilot, who is aboard a nearby boat, the dish is swabbed and the sample is preserved for future study.
While using drones to collect samples isn’t new, the researchers have, for the first time, shown that the types of bacteria found in each whale’s breath are linked to their health.
They used previously collected high-resolution images of the whales, as well as an existing dataset that reflects factors such as robustness, thinness, length, skin condition and presence of whale lice.
When they paired the microbial samples with this information, they found that thin whales tended to have bacteria that can cause infections in mammals, whereas robust whales had bacteria associated with fatty oil-rich environments.
“Basically we’re still uncovering and understanding what this means, but we think this might be another way to add a measure of health of these animals,” Miller said. “It’s kind of like a biomarker of what’s going on for these animals and how fat or thin they are.”
Drone collection safer, easier
Miller says collecting the whale breath samples by drone is a bit tricky, but it’s safer and less invasive than other techniques.
Previously, researchers would need to be on a boat and use a long pole with a petri dish attached to collect samples.
“To get to the nostrils or the blowholes of the animal, you actually have to get quite close to the animal and it’s dangerous. It’s very, very stressful for the animal to try to get that close.”
With the drone collection, Miller says, the whales seem utterly unperturbed.
“They don’t seem to notice the drone at all. And it’s quiet and it’s stable. It’s super small and it’s a really easy method to do.”
Helpful for monitoring
Sean Brillant, a senior conservation biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Federation who has done research on North Atlantic right whales, says the study is “surprising and a really novel approach.”
“What a great opportunity this tool is providing for advancing knowledge around this animal,” he said.
“We have a very hard time approaching these animals and if they don’t want to be approached, they outpace most boats we have and they just go underwater and disappear.”
Brillant said many whales who have survived entanglements or ship strikes continue to suffer health effects from those experiences, so studying the spray from their blowholes could help monitor them over time.
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