Technicity: Touching Whale Exhale with Drones

The chapter connects theories of the origins of technology to drone conservation labor and the increasing proximity between scientists and whales. The case study describes the practices of Ocean Alliance, based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which flies drones through the misty exhale of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) and gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, to gather biotic data about whale health. Here, drone intimacy is forged through attention to whales and the drone's ability to touch their microbial exhaust. Integrating scholarship on touch by feminist Eva Hayward (2010) and scholarship on technologies of atmospheric attunement by anthropologist Kathleen Stewart (2011), this chapter develops an understanding of the delicate choreography of navigating a drone through a cloud of whale exhale on a drifting boat in gusting wind, revealing the elementalities that make intimacy and care possible.