43 Tracking a whale carcass

Research Fellow in Marine Science, at Griffith University in Australia Olaf Meynecke talks to me about tracking a whale carcass around the ocean to map how wind and tides affect its movement.  

This research will hopefully be used so that beached whales are not taken to landfill but that they can be towed to out to sea and their nutrients returned to the ocean without colliding with ships.

He talks about his latest paper 'Dead on the Beach? Predicting the Drift of Whale Remains Improves Management for Offshore Disposal', the role the nutrients of a dead whale plays in the ecosystem, the challenges they faced, why this cheaper option is not the current way of doing, he tells me about sitting in whale carcasses for arthritis treatment, the software they used to map the whale's 150km drift path, the sharks that fed on the carcass and more.

His paper https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/12/7/1156

 

All music by Jacques van Wyk