An animal’s weight is more than just a random characteristic: It’s a window into understanding fundamental truths about how animals survive. By weighing animals, experts glean insights into how much those animals eat, how quickly they and their population are growing and — perhaps most crucially — how outside stressors like the byproducts of human life can impact their health.
That information is a crucial launching pad for conservationists to determine how best to protect these species.
But weighing especially large mammals isn’t easy. When it comes to whales, which can grow over 100 feet long and weigh upward of 200 tons, scientists have had to rely on the limited information provided by dead specimens that were caught in fishing nets, washed up on shore or were intentionally killed for the purpose of research. Though obviously better than no specimens at all, this narrow scope pales in comparison to what scientists could learn from live specimens, especially as whales come under increased threat.
That’s where drones come in.
Scientists have figured out a way to pair drone photographs with historical data, using the combined information to develop a model used that accurately calculates a whale’s body volume and mass. The new model can be used to track both individual whales and various species over time.
This breakthrough, which was published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution in October, is an important step in both researching and protecting whales.
“Knowing the body mass of free-living whales opens up new avenues of research,” Fredrick Christiansen, the lead researcher of the study from Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, told Cosmos.
Standing on the deck of sailboats, researchers controlled drones and took photos of 86 southern right whales. Though these photos helped create a model endemic to this species of whale, scientists believe the approach can be adjusted for use with other large marine animals.
“Weighing live whales with a drone at sea, we can get growth rates and changes in body conditions,” Michael Moore, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a co-author of the study told Cape Cod Times. “We learn a lot more about stressors like food, what lack of food does to animals.”
Moore also noted that the model can help when trying to detangle whales from fishing gear. The model will allow veterinarians and conservationists to give an accurate dose of sedatives when freeing the whale.
Two co-authors of the study are already using the model to look at the links between survival rates of southern right whale calves and kelp gull harassment, which is when birds land on the backs of the calves and attack, which can negatively impact the calves’ health and survival rates.
Co-authors Mariano Sironi and Marcela Uhart, from the Southern Right Whale Health Monitoring Program, told Cosmos that “the use of drones to estimate whale weight and condition, as well as to individually track calves while they grow beside their mothers, has been a real breakthrough in our investigation.”
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Tag: marine biology
How Coral Reefs Might Resist Climate Change, America’s Coolest Mayor Runs for Senate and More
Unnatural Selection, The New Yorker
The ocean holds many wonders, but perhaps none are more precious and more fragile than its tropical coral reefs. Coral, at first sight, appears to be a lifeless rock, but it’s actually a miniature animal that houses an even smaller plant inside its cells — a symbiotic relationship developed over millennia. Ruth Gates, a University of Hawaii marine biologist, is attempting to speed up that evolutionary process and create a “super coral” by exposing it to the harsher conditions expected by next century: warmer, more acidic water caused by climate change. It’s a new take on conservation — call it “assisted evolution” — that’s also being tested on forests in Syracuse, N.Y., where a professor is genetically engineering a fungus-resistant chestnut tree. Can these scientists do what Mother Nature couldn’t?
This Mayor Wants To Give Struggling Cities a Front-Row Seat in D.C., Next City
Standing at 6’8” with a shaved head and tattoos on his arms, the mayor of Braddock, a Pittsburgh suburb hammered by industrial decline, doesn’t look like your typical public official. Dubbed America’s coolest mayor, John Fetterman has implemented some of the brightest ideas for urban renewal, as he replaced a moribund steel industry with public art, urban agriculture, craft beer and other hipster fare. Now, Fetterman is competing in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat (currently held by a Republican). If he wins, he’s promised a new Marshall Plan (like the billions invested in Europe after WWII) for America’s forgotten cities. In most election cycles, Fetterman would be written off as an outsider without a chance, but in this unpredictable year, this fresh candidate may just have a shot.
The Resurrection of St. Benedict’s, 60 Minutes
Up until 1967, St. Benedict’s Prep was your run-of-the-mill Catholic boy’s school, serving upper-middle class, white families in Newark, N.J. But when racial tensions exploded into bloody riots that summer, whites fled the city en masse. The school nearly collapsed (it closed for one year), but faculty member Edwin Leahy, then 26, quickly got it back on its feet. It reopened with one big change: students would run the school themselves, keeping each other out of gangs and competing for top marks. Of its 550 students today, nearly all from poor neighborhoods, only two percent don’t finish high school — in a city with a 30 percent dropout rate. Intellect isn’t the major problem in American education, Leahy, a Benedictine monk, argues; it’s all about making students’ realizing their own potential and see “the fact that they are a gift to somebody else.”