Researchers from Mystic Aquarium are heading to the icy tundras of Canada to study beluga breath. That’s the white-plume mixture of water cells, proteins and lung fluid that whales exhale when they come up to the surface.
It’s also known as beluga snot.
“To translate it for kids, ‘beluga snot’ works really well,” said Tracy Romano, chief scientist at Mystic Aquarium.
“Anything gross, they love.”
Hidden inside that snot are clues as to how changes in the environment could affect the immune system of beluga whales and their resiliency to climate change.
“They're an Arctic species,” Romano said, “so they do rely on the ice and now that ice is disappearing.”
Belugas rely on the ice for protection from predators like killer whales. The ice also acts as a buffer to human exposure.
“With climate change, there are more predators coming up into the Arctic,” Romano said, “more human encroachment with the loss of sea ice, so more shipping traffic, more potential of oil spills, contaminants. Time will tell, but their environment is definitely rapidly changing.”
Romano already has a good baseline of how belugas are doing in captivity thanks to breath samples from beluga whales at Mystic Aquarium. Now she’s working with a team to get samples from wild belugas in Churchill, Canada, home to one of the largest beluga populations in the world.
Romano and research scientist Laura Thompson made their first trip to Churchill last summer, working in a tiny boat to collect breath samples from whales swimming nearby.
“The water is pretty clear, so you can actually see where the whales are underwater and anticipate, ‘Oh, that one's going to come up and take a breath,’” Thompson said.
In order to collect the samples, Thompson and Romano lean over the boat with a long pole and a plate attached to the end of it, aiming to get it right over the blow hole.
“Trying to get that plate really over where the breath is going to be and then we pull that back in, evaluate whether or not there's a sample on the plate and then process it,” Thompson said.
Romano and Thompson were able to collect 88 breath samples last summer and they’re planning on going back to Canada this summer to get more.
As to what those samples might tell them? That’s still a mystery.
Romano said belugas might be more resilient to climate change than other whales because they eat a lot of different kinds of foods, but there’s no denying that the ice they rely on is melting.
Áine Pennello is a Report for America corps member, covering the environment and climate change for Connecticut Public
