About ten kilometers off the north coast of Iceland, a group of scientists is conducting a study on the murmur of whales to assess their level of stress when they pass through the tourist boats Note, a sector of the tourism industry that has grown rapidly in recent years around the subarctic island.
From a small sailboat, researchers from whale sage – a marine conservation organization – submit a drone that passes hours before being able to spot a humpback whale.
Fixed to the structure, the aircraft has two plates of Petri dish and a cylindrical container transparent to capture drops of water expelled by the cetacean.
A study very carefully
Drones, while less disruptive to whales than boats, can also alter their behavior. That’s why taking the sample should be short, approximately equivalent to one breath time.
The drone carefully flies over the animal, passes through the jet of water that it expels when breathing and performs its maneuver. Back on the ship, he hands the sample to the scientists.
Wrapped in paraffin and frozen, the samples are sent to a laboratory for analysis.
Unprecedented operation
The purpose of this unprecedented operation is to assess the stress level of whales through their hormones, at a time when more and more tourists start to admire them.
To do this, they take a sample before and after the tour ship passes through and then compare them. and determine the stress of cetaceans.
In Iceland, more than 360,000 people attempted to spot whales crossing the silver waters of the North Atlantic in 2019, triple the number ten years ago.
A third of the visitors departed from the port of Husavik esThey head for the cool waters of Skjalfandi Bay.
climate change
Previous studies, based on behavioral observations, concluded that this tourist activity caused less disturbance to the whales.
“We found that they were uncomfortable when they ate, but it didn’t last long,” said one of the study’s authors, Marianne Rasmussen, who heads the Research Center at the University of Iceland in Husavik. “There was no impact on (your) general physical condition. “
“Examine hormones such as cortisol, linked to stress, allows us to determine the physiological stress levels of whales “explains the organization’s co-founder, Tom Grove, a 26-year-old doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh.
“Whales are important to us, to live, because they are part of our planet’s ecosystem,” says Sophie Simonin, 29, co-founder of the association. “They also absorb a lot of CO2”adds the environmental activist.
According to a December 2019 study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), great whales they absorb an average of 33 tons of carbon dioxide.
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