In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest marine oil spills ever. In the aftermath of the disaster, whale scientist Iain Kerr traveled to the area to study how the spill had affected sperm whales, aiming specialized darts at the animals to collect pencil eraser-sized tissue samples.

It wasn’t going well. Each time his boat approached a whale surfacing for air, the animal vanished beneath the waves before he could reach it. “I felt like I was playing Whac-A-Mole,” he says.

As darkness fell, a whale dove in front of Kerr and covered him in whale snot. That unpleasant experience gave Kerr, who works at the conservation group Ocean Alliance , an idea: What if he could collect that same snot by somehow flying over the whale? Research

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