A recent news article published by The Wildlife Society described how researchers are using drones to better track the health and populations of blue whales, humpbacks and even orcas using the technique they refer to as the Snotbot Program.

The news article is based on a recent article published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin:

“Unoccupied aerial system technologies applied to health assessments of large whales can have positive implications for progressive management. We focused on the collection of cetacean respiratory blow samples for endocrine, DNA profiling, microbial metabarcoding, and metagenomics analyses, with the goal of improving management of large whale populations.”