Use of a Conservation Canine for Marine Mammal Scat Collection in Hawaii – Pilot Study

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Analysis of scat samples from animals is a non‐invasive technique that can provide important data on animal diet, hormone levels, microbiome, and genetics. The use of a trained Conservation Canine (K9) to detect marine mammal scat at sea has been proven to be useful in the Pacific Northwest with Southern Resident Killer Whales (Lundin et al. 2016) and in other unpublished reports and media, but until now, had not been documented in Hawaii. In order to explore the viability of this method in Hawaii, the Navy invested in a pilot study, where the K9 was successfully trained to detect and ‘direct’ boat drivers – via changes in behavior – to the scat of three species of marine mammals (G. macrorynchus, K. breviceps, and P. crassidens).