Today in my Aquatic Science class we did a lab where we had to identify different whales based on pictures of their flukes. When a whale comes to the surface, most of the time only it's fluke is revealed. This is how scientists identify them because each fluke is unique. Some have scars, some have chunks taken out of them, and some have tiny bumps or notches that are just a little more prominent than other flukes. This helps scientists distinguish between the different whales so they can study what type of whale lives where and conduct research easily on one whale simply by looking at the fluke.
In this lab we were given a folder full of whale flukes like the picture above. We were given a manilla envelope that contained four whale flukes and my partner and I had to identify which one it matched in the folder. The hardest part was the further along we got and the more we just wanted to get it over with, the more they all started to look the same. But this was a good experiment to get us to work together and be "whale detectives". I wouldn't change anything about it.
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