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Drones in the Mist

This summer, WHOI scientists, including Michael Moore, director of the WHOI Marine Mammal Center, and microbiologist Amy Apprill, and colleagues from NOAA announced the use of drones as a new non-invasive tool to obtain hard-to-get health measurements of large endangered whales in the wild. The drone flies through the whale’s “blow” to collect exhaled breath vapor, adding greatly to the data already known about individual whales. (Photo by John Durban/NOAA and Michael Moore, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Acquired under National Marine Fisheries Service Permit 17355-01 and NOAA Class G flight authorization 2015-ESA-4-NOAA)