Sea-faring working dogs

Monday's Boston Globe: Health/Science section. I saw the paper this morning as I was putting the recycling out. The large front page photo was of a Rottie, on the edge of a boat, looking out over the open waters of the ocean. And there was some large mass on the surface of the water. The title of the article was, "The scent of whale". Intriguing, I pulled the section out to save and read. When I got home tonight, I read a fascinating story about dogs being used for whale research. These dogs work to find whale scat, or more commonly known as, whale poop. Who would've thunk such an activity existed? I've never even thought about whether whales pooped or not. But I suppose everything poops, I guess I was just a tad shocked that they poop chunks of brown, orange, and/or neon red poop on the surface of the water. The article states that it is incredibly smelly (as I imagined it would be) but sinks in less than an hour. So it's hard to find. But with dogs, they have been able to collect four times the amount of whale poop they would normally be able to find on their own.
Why?
Good question.
Research of course. They are examining the poop, or scat rather, for information regarding hormone levels, parasites, marine biotoxins, and nutrition. It will help researches figure out why our whales are dying. And they are doing this research right here! A senior whale researcher from the New England Aquarium has been using dogs for three years now.
Another great job for our working dogs! Some of the dogs used were originally dogs trained for other jobs just as drug sniffing or tracking. But for one reason or another, being out on the open waters searching for whale scat was the perfect job for them. For example, one dog refused to jump up onto counters as needed for his job. He turned out to be a better whale scat dog. Another dog was too hot to do searches on land. He felt just fine out on a boat on the breezy seas.
Pretty cool stuff.