The unique Sri Lankan blue whales live in busy shipping waters. Marine biologist Asha de Vos is using mathematical models to put them out of harm’s way

You advocate using mathematical models to prevent Sri Lankan whales being killed by ship strikes. How big a problem is this?
Ship strikes are a well known cause of mortality for all types of whales everywhere. But Sri Lanka is in the top 0.2 per cent for global shipping traffic. In 2012, a blue whale was found wrapped around the bow of a container ship that came into Colombo, Sri Lanka’s main international port. Days later we found another carcass floating at sea with gashes from a ship. But for every whale that is found, at least 10 go unseen because the carcasses sink or get pushed out to sea. Collecting evidence of this problem is pretty challenging.

What’s special about Sri Lankan blue whales?
They are a unique subspecies of pygmy blue whale. At 25 metres long, they’re about 5 metres shorter than the Antarctic blue whale. Also, unlike other blue whales, they don’t migrate to the poles to feed but stay largely in the northern Indian Ocean. They also speak a very different dialect. These whales rely on the area around Sri Lanka for breeding, calving and feeding. I am interested in finding out why, what sustains them and how important the area is to their survival.

How many of these whales are there?
We don’t have an estimate yet, but my team is putting together a photo-identification catalogue that will help us determine this. We know they are endangered. Nearly 1300 were killed by illegal Russian whaling in the 1960s and 70s, but today the biggest threat is ship traffic, which is projected to double globally in the next 20 years.

What safety solutions are there?
Voluntary boat-speed reductions, giving whales more time to get out of the way, have been used to protect right whales along the south-eastern US coast. Another solution, used off the coast of California, is to redraw the shipping lanes to areas less heavily visited by whales. In collaboration with scientists involved in those efforts, I’m working on mathematical models to understand which areas are key to the survival of the Sri Lankan whales, and where they intersect with shipping lanes.

How will models help prevent ship strikes?
Using sighting locations and satellite data on temperature, chlorophyll concentrations and salinity, we build habitat models. When we know which conditions attract whales, we can identify other areas in which they might gather, then overlay the shipping lanes to see where the ships and the whales come together. Then we can target those areas for reducing the likelihood of collisions.

What’s the next step in protecting the blue whales in Sri Lanka?
First we need economic studies: if shipping lanes need to be shifted, what is the most feasible way to do it? We also need to understand the risk of extinction. Once we have this information, we can work on solutions with maritime authorities. But we also need to inform people that this problem exists, and drive home just how important these species are for the broader health of the planet.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Whales caught in traffic”

The VRSA Dress, 2013 (Image: Anna Dumitriu)

Fancy being wrapped up in E. coli? Clothed in MRSA? The very idea is enough to make your skin crawl, but for artist Anna Dumitriu it is a source of inspiration. She can turn these terrifying bugs into something strangely beautiful – by combining them with textiles.

“I stitch bacteria and antibiotics into cloth to make patterns and reveal the stories behind microbes,” Dumitriu says. Her biological “inks” range from methicillin- and vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA and VRSA, respectively) to E. coli, other deadly superbugs and tuberculosis.

Sometimes the bugs themselves mark the cloth; in other cases, such as the Staphylococcus varieties, she uses a patented agar jelly to stain them instead. She stitches them into Victorian-era cotton dresses, silk patchwork quilts and crocheted wool bedcovers, and then kills them using a high-pressure laboratory sterilisation technique.

Dumitriu is a quilt sewn with MRSA and a dress sewn with VRSA at the , until 1 November. The VRSA dress metaphorically maps the evolution of S. aureus from a harmless human microbe into a killer bug by using three separate strains to pattern the dress. “The style of the dress is from 1960, the year that MRSA was first observed,” Dumitriu says. The white dress is sewn with little patchwork squares, each one speckled with either S. aureus, MRSA or VRSA and various antibiotics.

She harvested everyday S. aureus from her nose, and grew it on the dress. Next, she grew two deadly laboratory strains of evolved S. aureus: MRSA and VRSA. “Vancomycin is a last-ditch antibiotic to treat cases of MRSA. But VRSA is resistant to vancomycin as well, which is terrifying.”

Out in the world

The dress captures the growing global problem of antibiotic resistance among disease microbes: in March, the UK’s chief medical officer Sally Davies said . The World Health Organization says that , while a high percentage of infections acquired in hospitals are MRSA and VRSA.

Dumitriu embroiders patterns on the dress using thread stained with modern antibiotic drugs and older antibiotic compounds such as yellow turmeric and orange , which is derived from a red dye.

The VRSA was resistant to all of these, and only died when sterilised. To avoid catching the bugs, Dumitriu works inside a biosafety level 2 lab, following standard lab safety procedures. Even when using everyday environmental bacteria, she keeps the cultures at low temperatures to minimise the chances of breeding pathogens.

Part of us

Dumitriu’s fascination with bacteria began as a fine arts student when she started painting images of creatures under a microscope. “E. coli absolutely horrified me. On our salad, a version of it could kill you. But we carry around 2 kilos of these bacteria in our gut. It’s a part of us,” she says. Similarly S. aureus live harmlessly in about 30 per cent of people, and can affect our mood and appetite, and even communicate with our nervous system. “The more you look at them, the stranger they become. I wanted to share these stories with others,” she says.

Bed Flora: a collaborative crochet based on the bacteria from the artist’s own bed, which has been added to by exhibition visitors whenever it has been exhibited since 2006 (Image: Anna Dumitriu)

She is also designing a dress using hypersymbionts – human-dwelling bacteria that actively improve us, making us fitter, happier or more intelligent. It will go on display in Taipei, Taiwan, in November. Her next big project, though, is to set up a level 2 laboratory in an art gallery so that visitors can watch and play with live, genetically modified bacteria as the bugs multiply, grow and communicate.

For an upcoming solo show in London, which opens early next year, Dumitriu will focus on tuberculosis. One of the main exhibits will be a collection of tiny felt lungs embroidered with dead TB bacteria and dust. “The show will highlight the superstitions around TB in the 1900s, such as dust being a cause of consumption,” she says. “Like a lot of my work, it is about uncovering the bizarre histories behind medical microbiology and showing how much it has evolved.”