Climate and health
Baleen whales connect distant parts of the ocean, building energy reserves on feeding grounds and spending them thousands of kilometres away on breeding grounds. That makes them unusually sensitive to environmental change: a poor feeding season can be reflected in the body condition of an individual whale long before it becomes apparent in population numbers. My research uses drone photogrammetry to measure those changes directly, tracking body condition, growth, and reproductive output across populations and years, and linking individual health to the ocean conditions that shaped it. Working across hemispheres allows these relationships to be compared between ecosystems responding to climate change at different rates.