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How Antarctic Whales Are Helping Us Understand More About Climate Change

Crossbows and eerie silences – following Antarctic whales for climate change clues

BBC News 12 JUN 2024

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Scientists follow the whales and take tissue samples to study the animals' health

Inside the bodies of humpback whales are clues about how climate change is transforming Antarctica.

Our BBC science team crossed the Southern Ocean, with the researchers, on a mission to follow and study the giant whales of this remote, frozen wilderness.

At 03:00 in the morning there is an almighty crash. Every drawer in our cabin is flung open and contents hurled against the wall. We hit a 12-metre wave.

I’m not a seafarer; this is alarming, but apparently not unusual on the Drake Passage - the stretch of the notoriously rough Southern Ocean we are on. We’re aboard a 200-passenger tourist ship, with a team of wildlife scientists, on our way to the Antarctic Peninsula.

One of the researchers, Dr Natalia Botero-Acosta has an arresting piece of equipment in her hand luggage - a custom-made crossbow. “It’s not a weapon,” she explains. “It’s a scientific tool we use to collect whale skin and blubber samples.”

Using the crossbow and a drone, the researchers will carry out up-close health checks on every humpback whale they can find, to work out if these massive mammals are getting enough to eat.