Mystic — Mystic Aquarium announced Tuesday that a new study on beluga whales, based on research on beluga whales at the aquarium, has been published in PLOS ONE, an international peer-reviewed, open-access online publication about science and medicine.

The research was conducted by Tracy Romano, chief scientist and vice president of biological research at the aquarium, and Laura Thompson, postdoctoral fellow who carried out the work as part of her doctoral thesis, the aquarium said in a news release.

The article is titled, “Blow Collection as a Non-Invasive Method for Measuring Cortisol in the Beluga.” The research involved using breath analysis to determine the presence of important hormones critical in metabolism and physiological adaptations that aid in assessing health status, the aquarium said. The objective was to determine whether breath could reveal similar information as the blood.

The aquarium’s beluga whales were trained through positive behavioral reinforcement to exhale on signal into a Petri dish, the aquarium said. Monthly samples were taken from each animal between 2011 and 2013 to monitor cortisol levels throughout the year and investigate seasonal variation in cortisol production.

Romano’s team also did similar tests on wild belugas in Bristol Bay, Alaska, as part of the health assessment study. The ultimate goal of the research was to collect breath from stranded or free-ranging belugas such as those from nearby Cook Inlet that are endangered.

The blow sampling methodology for belugas developed by Romano and her colleagues proved to be good candidate for non-invasive monitoring of hormones in belugas, the study concluded. According to the study, blow can be collected from both wild and aquarium animals efficiently for the purposes of health monitoring and research, and ultimately be useful in obtaining data in wild populations, including endangered species, which are difficult to handle directly, the aquarium said. Funding for the work was provided by the Office of Naval Research.

“Research is an essential part of the mission of Mystic Aquarium,” Romano said. “Developing a non-invasive way to monitor the health of beluga whales at Mystic Aquarium not only protects them, but also provides important information for health and conservation efforts for belugas in the wild.”