What can we learn from whale poo?

A molecular ecologist is hoping studying the faeces of endangered southern right whales, or tohorā, will help protect them from the threat of climate change.

Last year, ABC reported an Australian man's unusual jam jar collection of frozen whale faeces had led to new information.

Rod Keogh had been collecting the faeces from South Australia's Fowlers Bay for more than seven years.

His treasure trove had led scientists to learn about the diet and gut health of the tohorā, which is hoped to help increase the population, as global warming and rising water temperatures could be putting the whale's traditional diet at risk.

University of Auckland Associate Professor Emma Carroll told Checkpoint she had also studied faeces from New Zealand's Auckland Islands and South Africa.

"It's amazing what you can learn about whales by studying their poo. It's a fantastic resource."

Carroll said tohorā were historically thought of as another kind of humpback whale, which migrated to Antarctica and ate krill.

However, it turned out that tohorā did not do that.

"They're actually staying around the kind of mid-latitude, around what we call the subtropical convergence, and they're eating more prey than we ever thought," she said.

"This is really exciting. It links in with satellite telemetry work that we've been doing on the species as a global community, that shows that these whales are actually travelling and feeding from, like, 30 degrees south, all the way to the ice age.

"So, in a changing ocean, they're taking advantage of lots of different ecosystems around the southern hemisphere."

Carroll said it was unlikely that their diet had changed, but scientists were only now able to understand more about their foraging ecology, as whaling had decimated the population.

"We think it is good. Resilience is good.

"Not having reliance on one, or two, types of prey has to be good, when ecosystems are changing throughout the Southern Ocean."

However, Carroll said it was still unknown whether their diet was nutritious enough. That was what she hoped to find out next.

Carroll also hoped to be able to study how the changing ecosystems would affect the tohorā.

"Ninety percent of our whales are foraging in a region south of Australia, but, you know, we're not able to sample their poo when they're out in the open ocean like that, and, in fact, this region is virtually unstudied. We don't really know what kind of ecosystem and plankton are there."

However, she had hope for the future of the tohorā.

"They're able to adapt and they've survived for thousands of years already. They've survived different types of environmental change.

"I think if we can give them a chance, and reduce other human impacts on them, like ship strike and entanglement, then I think they can continue to recover from whaling. We've supported their recovery once, from 400 to 15,000, and I think we can continue."