Snotbots

I’ve been avoiding this topic for a week, but I have to admit: as blog topics go, this one is golden. A conservation group called Ocean Alliance is raising money on Kickstarter to implement a plan to collect whale snot. Okay, when I say it like that it sounds, well, stupid. But wait, there’s more.

In order to retrieve the whale snot, Ocean Alliance intends to build a fleet of drones called Snotbots. These Snotbots will hover above surfacing whales and collect snot when the whale exhales. (I’m not sure whether the idea of Snotbots makes this snot plan sound less stupid or more stupid.)

The snot samples will be returned to researchers who will analyze the snot for various kinds of biological data. This data will provide researchers information on the whale’s reproductive cycles and on their stress levels that result from human activity in the oceans. That information will help scientists protect the species.

Until the Snotbots are deployed, researchers will continue to get data samples from whales the old-fashioned way: by chasing them with a loud motorboat and then shooting them in the back with a dart from a crossbow. This method understandably annoys the whales and that skews the data the scientists are collecting.

In the immortal words of Star Trek’s Scotty, “Admiral, there be whales here!” And now Kirk can reply, in all seriousness, “Deploy the Snotbots!”

I hope this Kickstarter plan works. Snotbots are an idea whose time has come.