Insights Into the Respiratory Microbiome of Free‐Ranging Tamanend's Bottlenose Dolphins ( Tursiops erebennus ) from Drone‐Collected Blow

Although understanding of respiratory health in free‐ranging cetaceans has historically been limited, recent advances in drone technology have enabled noninvasive collection of cetaceans exhaled respiratory vapor (i.e., “blow”), offering new opportunities to study cetaceans' respiratory microbiome. This study aimed to collect blow from Tamanend's bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops erebennus ) in the Charleston Estuarine System (CES) to investigate their blow microbiome. Between October 2022 and June 2023, 43 blow samples were collected during 71 drone flights. Air and seawater samples were collected concurrently as environmental controls. Bacteria communities from 16 dolphin blow, 25 seawater, and 7 air samples were profiled by sequencing the 16S rRNA gene, including three blow samples classified as “high‐confidence” based on direct observation of the drone flying directly through the blow. The high‐confidence blow samples were dominated by Porphyromonas , Psychrobacter , and Suttonella , and had 18 core amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) that closely resembled sequences collected from dolphins previously. The other blow samples produced mixed results, indicating consistent blow capture with a drone is challenging for small cetaceans. Overall, this study provides optimized methods for collecting and processing drone‐captured dolphin blow while highlighting this minimally invasive tool's potential for future respiratory health monitoring in wild dolphin populations.