Blubber as a Blueprint: Rethinking Baleen Whale Health

Featured in the latest edition of Squared UP — the newsletter of the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences — MRI Whale Unit postdoctoral research fellow Dr Bharti Arora is rethinking how we assess baleen whale health.

Baleen whales face growing physiological pressures in a rapidly changing ocean, from elevated stress and suppressed immunity to declining reproductive rates — much of it driven by human activity. Dr Arora's work explores blubber as a minimally invasive window into whale health, storing key reproductive and stress-related hormones that complement traditional survey methods.

Working alongside researchers from Argentina, the USA, and New Zealand, she has helped refine and unify blubber hormone extraction protocols — reducing hazardous solvent use, streamlining methodology, and improving reproducibility across laboratories worldwide.

A quiet but significant step forward for global whale research. Read the full feature in the May 2026 edition of Squared UP for more.