Dogs and drones New tech and a sharp nose help to save endangered orcas

Nestled between the US state of Washington and Vancouver Island, the San Juan Islands are a vibrant haven for North American wildlife.

- Maya Yang

Here, all of the world's remaining 74 southern resident subspecies of orcas find sanctuary, surfacing daily from the Salish Sea.

Out at sea watching the whales is Dr Deborah Giles, an orca scientist, with her colleague, Eba. Eba is a brown and white rescue dog with a remarkable nose. Found as a cold, wet, five-month-old puppy on the streets of Sacramento, California, she has been detecting whale scat - or faeces - since the age of four.

Dressed in a bright orange lifejacket - and sometimes goggles - Eba perches on Giles's research boat, scanning the wind. When she catches a whiff of orca faeces, she raises her nose, sometimes whimpering or wagging her tail to point Giles in the right direction.

Orca-detecting dogs have become an unlikely ally in the fight to save the whales.

Giles, a member of the marine conservation organisation SeaDoc Society, said: “We wanted to use Eba because it allows us to stay really far away from the whales and not stress them out.”

Through the study of whale faeces, researchers can uncover a wealth of biological insights from a single sample, including diet, hormone levels, exposure to toxins, pregnancy, gut microbiome composition and the amount of microplastics in their system, as well as the presence of parasites, bacteria and fungi.