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IMAGE: A gray beluga whale calf with three adults in Cook Inlet, Alaska. NMFS ESA/MMPA Permit #20465. view more
Credit: Paul Wade, NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center.
NEWPORT, Ore. - Researchers can now determine the age and sex of living beluga whales in Alaska s Cook Inlet thanks to a new DNA-based technique that uses information from small samples of skin tissue.
Accurate age estimates are vital to conservation efforts for Cook Inlet belugas, which were listed as endangered following a significant population decline in the 1990s. Previously, researchers could only determine the age of beluga whales by studying the teeth of dead animals.
Cook Inlet beluga whales. Photo credit: NOAA Fisheries
NEWPORT, Ore. – Researchers can now determine the age and sex of living beluga whales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet thanks to a new DNA-based technique that uses information from small samples of skin tissue.
Accurate age estimates are vital to conservation efforts for Cook Inlet belugas, which were listed as endangered following a significant population decline in the 1990s. Previously, researchers could only determine the age of beluga whales by studying the teeth of dead animals.
The new aging method uses DNA methylation data and machine learning to develop a model that captures the relationship between methylation and age. This relationship provides an epigenetic clock for beluga whales.
Pamela Rosel of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently published confirmation that it s a previously unknown species. A very exciting paper! Lori Schwacke, chief scientist for conservation medicine at the National Marine Mammal Foundation and not one of Rosel s co-authors, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. It s such a small population in the Gulf of Mexico that marine scientists and managers were already focused on conservation efforts for them, particularly after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, said Schwacke. But now confirming that these whales are indeed a previously unknown species really raises those stakes.
Rosel s article in Marine Mammal Science used DNA, bones and reports of sightings and strandings to show the whales are unique. Rosel, who works at NOAA s Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Lafayette, named the new species Rice s whale after the scientist who first recognized that the whales lived in the Gulf.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) The tiny group of endangered whales that make the Gulf of Mexico their home turns out to be a previously unknown species. The best count is that there are about 33 of the long, slender filter feeders and definitely fewer than 100 of them. They’re listed as endangered in the U.S. and as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They were classified as one of three of Bryde’s (pronounced.
Tiny group of whales found in Gulf of Mexico is a new species
Updated Jan 31, 2021;
Posted Jan 31, 2021
FILE - In this 2019 file photo provided by the National Park Service, scientists performing a necropsy on an endangered whale that stranded in the Florida Everglades National Park. Federal scientists reported recently that a tiny group of whales in the Gulf of Mexico are a new species rather than Bryde’s whales, as they were previously classified. Scientists say the best population count is 33, but there definitely are fewer than 100 of these whales, now called Rice’s whales. (National Park Service via AP)AP