Speaker: Éadin N. O’Mahony, School of Biology, University of St. U.K.

Topic:  Humpback whale blow genomics and eDNA metabarcoding: exploring the drivers of a foraging social network in the Great Bear Sea.

Drone-collected humpback whale blow is used as a source of DNA for a relatedness study underpinning the social network of foraging whales in the Great Bear Sea. Remote drone-based blow sampling reduces potential stress to whales associated with biopsy sampling, engine noise and ship-strike. We collected 145 humpback blow samples in 2022 and 2023, and DNA extracts were shotgun sequenced to assemble low coverage whole genomes of known individuals. This same network of humpback whales congregates in specific ‘hotspot’ areas later into their foraging season, with unclear drivers to these geographically and temporally stable sites. We are using seawater environmental (e)DNA to map the biodiversity, community composition and turnover in a comparative study between key areas of Gitga’at and Haisla First Nation territories of what is now known as British Columbia, Canada. Éadin O’Mahony will present these key aspects of her PhD projects, aiming to untangle patterns of relatedness, community composition and social learning, with a particular focus on generating whole genomes from whale blow for conservation genomics.