Before he enrolled in grad school at URI on a National Science Foundation fellowship, Justin Richard spent nearly 10 years as a beluga whale trainer at Mystic Aquarium, teaching the Arctic marine mammals to voluntarily submit to regular health screenings. But it’s not so easy to conduct health screenings of wild belugas. So at URI, he’s trying to develop non-invasive ways to monitor the health of wild beluga populations, and he thinks it might be through the cells and hormones they exhale.
“Essentially, I study whale snot,” he said with a smile. According to Justin, beluga whales have a number of adaptations that allow them to thrive in the Arctic – their bright white color, insulating blubber, vocalizations that enable them to communicate in an ice-covered environment, and ability to feed on whatever food comes their way. But the Arctic environment is rapidly changing, and some populations of belugas are already threatened.
The current standard for collecting data from belugas is to capture fire a biopsy dart into the animal. Justin hope to find a less invasive approach, and one that can be used in areas where researchers aren’t allowed to catch the animal. “It will help scientists answer questions that they haven’t been able to answer before because they can’t access the animals,” like the sex rate and pregnancy ratio of a particular population of whales.
“Other researchers have studied whale hormone levels in their blow, but without the ability to compare them to blood samples, it’s a challenge to understand what these levels mean for a whale,” he said. Because of his access to the belugas at Mystic Aquarium, he can do both. He also intends to spend time in Arctic Canada during the next two summers to try to catch exhale samples from wild beluga whales.
When he finishes his doctorate in four or five years, he hopes to become a college professor and continue his research. “I want to study many marine mammals. I would find a great deal of value and satisfaction in being able to contribute to their conservation.”