Getting blood drawn at your annual physical is routine for human patients. Scientists studying marine mammals also take blood samples, but with this population it is a more complicated task.

When researchers want to study contaminants or pathogens in marine mammals, they need a relatively large blood sample from the animal. Getting this sample requires scientists to handle the animals, which is a labor-, time-, and cost-intensive process.

Milton Levin, associate research professor in the Department of Pathobiology and Veterinary Science, is leading a new $132,292 study funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to validate an existing paper-based technology for its use studying marine mammals. The Department of Pathobiology and Veterinary Science is in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources.

The hope is that this technology can provide researchers with the information they need to study marine mammal health using a fraction of the amount of blood traditional methods require. The dried blood spot cards only require a few drops, compared to five to 20 milliliters of blood.

“It would be helpful if we could reduce the volume of blood that we need,” Levin says.

The technology is simple: researchers draw blood from the animal using a needle, apply three to five drops to each dried blood spot card, and store it until they get back to the lab where they can test the sample.

This technology has been used for decades in human medicine; for example, to take samples from infants who cannot have large amounts of blood drawn. But is has not yet been validated for the study of marine mammals.

Reducing the amount of blood they need to collect means researchers could spend less time handling the animals, which would cause less stress for the animal.

Further, it is not uncommon for the blood taken by one research team to be used to address multiple research questions. If researchers need less blood to test for contaminants and pathogens with this new method, a single sample could be spread around to support more research.

This method could also be useful for studying smaller animals or very sick animals, when researchers cannot take as much blood. For example, Levin says researchers can safely take up to 50 milliliters of blood from a seal, the animal he works with most frequently, but far less from small animals like a bat or fish.

“For small animals, something that you couldn’t get a lot of blood from, it would be an advantage to have a technology where you only need a couple of drops of blood,” Levin says.

Another major benefit of this technology is that it does not need to be refrigerated.

“That’s important, because you may not always have access to refrigeration or electricity,” Levin says. “When we go out into the field, sometimes we just don’t have that, so on filter paper it’s easier.”

Levin’s research focuses on influenza in gray seal populations. They are interested in understanding the connection between exposure to contaminants, like PCBs, PFAS, heavy metals, pesticides, or harmful algal blooms and immune function. This research is broadly applicable to the study of other animal populations.

“The work we do on gray seals can apply to pretty much any wildlife species, dolphins, other seals, even terrestrial mammals,” Levin says.

Levin will also be collaborating with Mystic Aquarium on this project to collect samples from animals in their rehabilitation program.

One of the key questions Levin will address regarding the usefulness of this technology for marine mammal research is whether the sample will stay intact and yield reliable results for many years.

This is an important consideration for marine mammal research. When a major mortality event, like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, takes place, scientists want to be able to look back at data collected from before the event to get a clearer sense of how the event is impacting the population.

“We want to know if we take a blood spot and analyze it 10 years later, are we getting reliable results as one week in,” Levin says.