Drones are remaking marine mammal research

In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest oil spills at sea. After the disaster, whale scientist Ian Kerr traveled to the area to study how the spill affected sperm whales, aiming special darts at the animals to collect tissue samples the size of pencil erasers.

Things weren't going well. Every time his boat approached a whale surfacing for air, the animal disappeared under the waves before he could reach it. “I felt like I was playing Whac-A-Mole,” he says.

When darkness came whale pigeon in front of Kerr and doused him with whale snot. This unpleasant experience gave Kerr, who works for an environmental group Ocean Allianceidea: What if he could collect those same snot while somehow flying over a whale? Researchers can glean a lot of information from a whale's snot, including the animal's DNA sequence, its gender, its pregnancy, and the composition of its microbiome.

After many experiments, Kerr's idea evolved into what is known today as SnotBot: A drone equipped with six petri dishes that collect whale snot by flying over the animal as it surfaces and exhaling through a blowhole. Today, similar drones are used to collect snot from sperm whales around the world: they also collect this scientifically valuable mucus from other species such as blue whales and dolphins. “I would say drones have changed my life,” Kerr says.

It's not just slime

Collecting snot is one of many ways drones are used to study whales. Over the past 10-15 years, drone technology has made great strides in becoming accessible and easy to use. This was a boon for researchers. Scientists are “finding applications for drones in virtually every aspect of marine mammal research,” says Joshua Stewartecologist at the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University.