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Do tourist boats stress out whales?
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Just off the northern coast of Iceland, scientists are collecting data from whales鈥 breath to find out if they get stressed by whale-watching boats, an industry that has boomed in recent years.
Researchers from Whale Wise, a marine conservation charity, are studying the whales鈥 stress levels in their hormones.
From their small sailboat, a drone lifts off. After six hours of waiting, the scientists have finally spotted a humpback whale.
Attached to the flying device are two petri dishes 鈥 transparent cylindrical containers 鈥 that will collect water droplets from the whale鈥檚 spray.
The timeframe to collect the sample is short 鈥 the duration of a whale鈥檚 breath.
This time, the drone flies over the whale carefully, crossing through the spray coming from the whale鈥檚 blowhole ... and mission accomplished. It returns to the sailboat, delivering its precious cargo to the researchers.
Once wrapped in paraffin and frozen, the samples will be sent to a laboratory for analysis.
The researchers aim to collect samples before a whale watching boat arrives and then afterwards, then compare the two samples to determine the direct impact of that encounter on stress levels.
Tourists have been increasingly flocking to the waters of the North Atlantic off Iceland to admire the majestic creatures, though 2020 was a quiet year due to the pandemic.
More than 360,000 whale watchers were registered in 2019, three times the number a decade ago.
Almost a third of them began their whale watching tour in the Husavik harbour, heading for the chilly waters of Skjalfandi Bay.
Previous studies on tourism鈥檚 impact on whales, which were based on behavioural observations, concluded that tourism caused only minor disruptions to the mammals.
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