Ear Wax Plug Removed
                How do you want to tell your life’s’ story? Probably not through your earwax. Unfortunately for whales who lack thumbs though; their options are limited. In 2007 a male blue whale washed up on a Santa Barbara beach after being struck by a ship. Researchers removed a 10-inch long earplug from the carcass. . They decided to perform an extensive chemical analysis on it to see what the whale had been exposed to over its lifetime. Scientists normally use whale blubber to determine stress levels of whales, but blubber only provides valid information at certain intervals of the whale’s life. And scientists want to know all of it! They had been using earwax to determine age, similar to counting rings in trees. This detailed chemical analysis however provided some groundbreaking insight into the whale's life story.

Stress Hormone Cortisol
           

The earwax accumulates in layers inside the ear canal, which eventually creates a waxy plug that can be over a foot long. That could produce over 5 whale earwax candles, if your in to that. The layer is very light in color when the animal is migrating and not eating much, and it is much darker when the animal is getting plenty of food. How is this a useful tool for scientists? Well, just from the earwax scientists could tell the whale was likely born around 1995, that it was exposed to organic pollutants like DDT and many other pesticides in the first six months of life, most likely from nursing. They were also able to analyze the stress hormone cortisol, testosterone, flame-retardants, and mercury. The stress hormone levels were found very high in certain layers which tells us that it could have been separated from its mother at that time, or been seriously disturbed by noises. Based on whale migration patterns, the scientists could speculate where and when the whale was most stressed, and where it was exposed to most of the toxic chemicals. This gives us good insight into how the chemicals we produce affect all life.

            This new way of testing whale earwax can start to answer the 100 year old question of how are we  really affecting these animals? The stress hormone can tell how, where, and when ship traffic affects whales, environmental noise, climate change, and other contaminants. It can tell us more about whale development and what they encounter in their life. This also opens up the possibility of examining fossilized earwax which can tell us how the environment has changed. This new way of studying the mammal has opened up more possibilities than we realize right now. It is a very exciting time for cetologists! Lets just hope they don’t develop a whale sized Q-tip any time soon.



Blue Whale
 by Samantha Freitag


Sperm whale  -Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy