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Age Is Only Skin Deep
Photo: Dale Walsh/iStock InternationalA NEW TECHNIQUE could end whaling for scientific purposes
Researcher Daniel Burns and his colleagues were keeping a respectful distance behind a pair of courting humpback whales when a third whale came onto the scene. Soon Burns and his six-meter boat were sandwiched between three 35-ton whales. But with a kitchen sieve strapped to the end of a stick, he got what he came for: a sample of whale "dandruff" shed by the animals when they launch themselves out of the water or slap the surface.
Burns and his colleagues think the flakes could offer a noninvasive way of working out a whale’s age. If they are right, one of the key arguments in favor of killing whales for scientific purposes will be dead in the water.
Currently, the most accurate way to age baleen whales is to count the layers of earwax thought to form twice a year in the enclosed ear canals of humpbacks. But counting them
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