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 Up until now, gathering samples for whale research involved
shooting darts that penetrated the body. But Iain Kerr says there's
a cheaper, more efficient way to study the large mammals. Instead of
shooting darts at a whale for biopsy samples, a whale can
unknowingly shoot snot at a drone.
"We believe that whale snot or exhaled breath condensate is going to
be the golden egg of data from a whale. The idea here is that we can
go and collect physical data - DNA, viruses, bacteria, pregnancy
hormones, stress hormones, without the whale knowing," said Kerr the
CEO of Ocean Alliance, a non profit organization dedicated to whale
conservation based out of Gloucester, Massachusetts in the United
States.
 After successfully raising more than $230,000 (USD) on Kickstarter,
Kerr plans to deploy a Snotbot army for the first time to study
Right Whales off the coast Argentina.
For now, Kerr is perfecting his drone flying skills. His team built
this artificial whale blowhole system called Snotshot.
"When I get above the whale at about 12 feet I will fly over the
blowhole tilt the camera down and I will be looking at the blowhole
and you will see the snot coming up on the lens," he said.
The researchers are still prototyping different snot collectors that
attach to the drones.
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"One is just a simple high capacity sponge that is very resistant to
releasing its load. So it's a high capacity sponge and remember we
are not flying through and catching some snot, we are hovering and
its blowing, and its blowing, and its blowing," Kerr added.
With every blow, more data-rich snot is collected. That data, says
Kerr, is more important than ever. Climate change, commercial
whaling, and acoustic bleaching are just some of the dangers whales
now face.
He says this technology will help researchers better protect them -
one snot-filled robot at a time.
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