Join GMGI in partnership with Ocean Alliance to understand more about the secrets whale blow can tell us about the ocean.

Whales are considered sentinel species — their health offers an early warning about the condition of ocean ecosystems. Yet today, one in four cetacean species is vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered.

Join Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute (GMGI) to learn about its eight-year collaboration with Ocean Alliance (OA), a Gloucester-based nonprofit pioneering drone technology for marine mammal science. Together, GMGI and OA are using whale exhalant, or blow, collected with SnotBot®, an aptly-named drone used for noninvasive sample collection, to study whale respiratory microbiomes across multiple species and oceans. This research is building the foundation needed to track changes in the health status of whales and their ocean ecosystem over time.