Helicopters, Whale Snot, and Why You Don't Have to Kill Whales to Study Them

What do cursing, roller coasters, and whale snot have in common? They were the subjects of research projects awarded a 2010 Ig Nobel Prize a few weeks ago.

It's the part about whale snot that we're going to talk about, but first, you might be wondering exactly what the Ig Nobel Prize is. According to the organizers of the awards ceremony (it's been around for about 20 years), the purpose is to: "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

So what does whale phlegm have to do with it? Well, jokes aside, we're actually talking about whale "blow," or in more scientific terms, "exhaled breath condensate." It's the work of Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of the Zoological Society of London and Diane Gendron of Mexico's Instituto Politécnico Nacional. The three came up with a non-invasive way to determine the health of whales based on what comes out of their blowholes. (Read the abstract here, but you might want to keep a dictionary handy.)

The secret lies in a remote-controlled helicopter, launched from a nearby boat. The whale surfaces, the helicopter captures a sample when the whale blows, and just like that, you've got a Petri dish chock full of clues as to whether the whale, and in some cases the nearby population of whales, is healthy.

Whale snot is funny, but this is serious science. Many whale species are teetering on the brink of sustainability, although some are thankfully making comebacks. While in some respects, we are taking whale conservation more seriously these days, these gentle giants are still far too threatened for us to take a break. The International Whaling Commission tabled a proposal to allow commercial whaling this summer, but the issue will be revisited, and if the ban on commercial whaling is lifted, the results could be catastrophic. The issue is still in doubt, but what's beyond the shadow of a doubt is that we need to make sure President Obama opposes lifting the ban on commercial whaling.

Even without the potential re-emergence of commercial whaling, however, whales are still being slaughtered, mostly by Japan and mostly in the name of "research." (Of course, it's just good science that the edible parts end up for sale to Japanese consumers, right?)

Japan contends that, in order to study whales, you have to kill them. The whale snot research we're talking about is one more nail in the coffin for Japan's argument. The truth is, as scientists like Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, Agnes Rocha-Gosselin, and Diane Gendron know, that you can have the best of both worlds. You actually can continue to study whales and increase our scientific knowledge of them, and you can still protect them from harm by using non-invasive research procedures.

Photo credit: Christopher DiNottia