For those of you who couldn't be bothered clicking the link, Vlad is trying to shoot a special crossbow gun loaded with a whale drilling arrow that collects skin samples. The arrow is then retrieved and data from the burrowed flesh can be used to tell how old the whale is.
The Russians have asked me to host these whale poking festivals but my blood boils to think that people are going to all that trouble to spear a whale and then only pull back a few grams of its flesh. You'd think that if you had a whale boring harpoon head that you'd affix it to your highest powered explosive propelled hydraulic spear system but these scientists seem to think that all a whale is good for is for experiments.
I personally find that the easiest way to date a whale outside a laboratory is by measuring how many seconds it takes for the tongue to fry, adding 51 and then dividing by 10. It's accurate to about 130 years old and to within about 3 years.
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