Advances in research and technology allows scientists to study whales without harming them. Small skin samples, audio recordings and photographs are just some of the methods today’s researchers rely upon in their quest to study whales without harming them.

Listening to whales

Whales are rarely silent. They sing and click and trill frequently as they travel through the oceans. These sounds help individuals stay in contact, even when they are too far away to see one another. Researchers use submersible microphones to records whale sounds. These recordings can then be analyzed for clues to determine how many whales are in an area, whether they are sleeping or active, and how relaxed or stressed the animals might be.

Recognizing individuals with photographs

Every whale is different. For example, humpback whales have distinctive white markings on the underside of their flukes and right whales have unique markings around the mouth and blowhole.

With a little bit of practice (and some high quality photography equipment), scientists can use photographs to identify these unique markings on each whale, and create a catalog of all the known whales for a particular species or population.

But these pictures aren’t just for photo albums and memories. These carefully labeled and cataloged photographs allow whale researchers to identify a whale when it is seen again, which helps us learn how long whales live, where they  travel to and whether they tend to stay with the same group or move around.

Health check-ups

Many scientists are also using photo identification to track the health of individual whales throughout their lives. This helps us better understand how environmental conditions impact a whale’s health. We can also use photo identification to verify whether or not an individual whale survived an entanglement, gave birth to a baby or was killed by a ship strike.