With only 73 Southern Resident killer whales left in the Salish Sea – a series of waterways between British Columbia in Canada and the U.S. state of Washington – researchers are urgently trying to learn more about the health of the species so they can diagnose and treat any illnesses as early as possible.
They’re even using drones to collect the orcas’ breath without disturbing the animals.
Flying a drone over a moving killer whale and lining it up in exactly the right spot, just as it exhales, is a difficult task.
“Even for our professional drone pilots, collecting wild killer whale breath is easily their most technically challenging conservation mission,” says Dr. Hendrik Nollens, Vice President of Wildlife Health at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
“Placing the drone and its payload inside the breath plume, without interfering with the whale, is not too different from resolving a doctorate level geometry equation with each approach.”
Once samples have been collected, they are processed and analysed in the lab.
"This is certainly not veterinary medicine in its traditional sense,” he says.
The idea for this hands-off conservation programme was inspired by a Southern Resident whale called Scarlet, who died in 2018. Researchers knew she was sick but couldn’t find a cause and were unable to save her – their attempt to treat her with antibiotics coming too late. They hope using drones to track the killer whales without disturbing them will help them see changes over time and deal with any issues early enough to save the poorly animal.
"The idea of evaluating wild killer health was once a moonshot,” says Nollens, but “we are now well along the path towards veterinary assessments of wild orcas being an attainable reality and an asset for their conservation.”
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