Researchers Use Drones To Catch Whale Snot and Find a Deadly, Measles-Like Virus in the Arctic

Scientists are flying drones through whale breath to monitor ocean health.

Humpback whales are mammals, which means they have to surface to breathe a few times an hour. When they do, they exhale a thunderous, explosive cloud of mist. Decades ago, marine biologists hoping to study the health of these giants had to rely on crude, invasive methods, or worse — wait for the animal to wash up dead on a beach.

Now, they can just fly a drone through the cloud.

This innovative technique, colloquially known as “snot-bot” sampling, allows us to understand whale health better than ever before. But a new study using this tech has delivered a sobering wake-up call: a potentially deadly virus is circulating among whales above the Arctic Circle.

Catching the Breath of Giants

The study is a major international collaboration led by Nord University in Norway, involving partners like King’s College London. It represents a massive shift in how humanity monitors ocean health. The approach is elegant and straightforward. Fly a drone through the exhaled respiratory vapor of a whale, capture the biological material on a petri dish, and fly it back to the boat.

“Drone blow sampling is a game-changer. It allows us to monitor pathogens in live whales without stress or harm, providing critical insights into diseases in rapidly changing Arctic ecosystems,” says co-author Professor Terry Dawson, Department of Geography, King’s College London.

Between 2016 and 2025, the research team deployed these drones across the Northeast Atlantic. They targeted humpback, sperm, and fin whales in waters ranging from the tropical Cape Verde archipelago to the icy fjords of northern Norway and Iceland. By combining these aerial breath samples with skin biopsies, the team constructed a comprehensive viral profile of these elusive giants.

The most alarming discovery from the new data is the presence of cetacean morbillivirus in the high Arctic. The virus was detected in humpback whale groups in northern Norway, as well as in a sperm whale that appeared to be in poor health and a stranded pilot whale.

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The “morbillivirus” is highly pathogenic and dangerous. It was discovered in marine mammals in 1987 and found capable of causing severe damage to the respiratory, neurological, and immune systems of cetaceans. It is closely related to measles in humans and distemper in dogs. Over the last four decades, it has been the culprit behind numerous mass mortality events involving dolphins, porpoises, and whales across the globe.

The researchers note that this is exactly the same type of strain previously found in dolphins. This suggests the virus jumps between species and can travel vast distances. Its presence in the Arctic, a region previously thought to be relatively isolated from certain lower-latitude pathogens, indicates that the “biological barriers” of the ocean are not as impenetrable as we thought.

A Viral Storm in the Arctic

The study also found herpesviruses in humpback whales across all three sampling regions — Norway, Iceland, and Cape Verde. However, in a stroke of good news, the samples showed no evidence of avian influenza or the bacteria Brucella. Both of these pathogens have previously been linked to other strandings.

This pattern suggests that warming seas are also affecting viral transmission in the oceans, something which has been well documented on land. As the Arctic warms at a rate faster than the rest of the planet, warmer waters are inviting species to move further north, leading to new overlaps between populations that may not have interacted previously.

The researchers warn that “dense winter-feeding aggregations,” where whales, seabirds, and humans interact closely in concentrated areas, could become hotspots for viral transmission.

When different species of whales and dolphins congregate to feed, they share the water column and the air above it. If a virus like morbillivirus is introduced into a dense pod of humpbacks during a feeding frenzy, the potential for a rapid outbreak increases significantly. The virus’s immunosuppressive nature means it can also leave whales vulnerable to other stressors, creating a cascading health crisis.

Silver Lining

While the findings are concerning, the method used to obtain them offers hope. The ability to detect these pathogens early in free-swimming whales gives conservationists a fighting chance to understand and potentially mitigate threats, though it’s not clear how we’d fight a whale viral outbreak.

It’s an unlikely situation, but airborne drones are becoming one of our best tools to study marine creatures. By reading the “breath” of these animals, scientists can now take the pulse of the ocean itself, identifying the invisible shifts in the ecosystem before they turn into visible disasters.

“Going forward, the priority is to continue using these methods for long-term surveillance, so we can understand how multiple emerging stressors will shape whale health in the coming years,” says Helena Costa, the study’s lead author from Nord University.

As the Arctic continues to change, these flying petri dishes may well become the most important early warning system we have for protecting the giants of the sea.