Team of Students from Needham Study Whale Snot, And How It May Determine Stress Levels

Photo credit: Patch file photo

Students from the Olin College of Engineering in Needham are developing a better way of harvesting samples of whale mucus samples. Why, you ask? It’s the best way to determine stress levels that whales may experience, reported the Boston Globe.

Catching the spray from the creatures, it provides a sample for these researchers. But the team from Olin College is developing a drone that hovers above the whales’ spray hole, making a less obtrusive way to collect the sample. These teams from Olin as well as a Gloucester whale conservation nonprofit called Ocean Alliance, over the summer, gathered data in order to garner a permit to allow them to monitor whales with a robot, said the Globe.The group hopes it leads to new technology in the field of marine research.

The team said it estimated the cost to be about $3,000 for the device.

A study conducted in 2012 suggests that stress that whales endure, such as the loud noises from ships and boats on the ocean, could even affect reproduction.