DNA FINGERPRINTING

With DNA fingerprinting Ocean Alliance scientists will be able to determine unambiguously the identity of right whales and other focal animals, as well as their relatedness to other individuals. This relatively inexpensive technique using small samples of tissue will make it possible to determine how closely related whales from different oceans are. Such information gives the strongest insights into stock boundaries. The tissue samples will come from the same samples used for research on ocean toxins.