Dear colleagues, 

On behalf of my co-authors, I am delighted to share our new Note published in Marine Mammal Science showing that UAVs flown by professional pilots can collect breath samples from killer whales with little impact:

Lo, C. F., Nollens, H. H., Nollens, B. A., Sears, M., Hanson, M. B., Weiss, M. N., Sheppard, J., Welch, C., Friel, R., & Gaydos, J. K. (2024). Behavioral responses of Bigg's and Southern Resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) to uncrewed aerial vehicle-based breath sample collection. Marine Mammal Science, e13192. 

Please find this publication available open access through the following link: https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.13192

You can find a short digest about the paper in our recent blog post here: https://www.seadocsociety.org/blog/studying-how-killer-whales-respond-to-the-presence-of-research-drones 

Best Regards,
Catherine 


Catherine Lo (she/her/hers)
Research Assistant
SeaDoc Society
www.seadocsociety.org