Acknowledgments
Thanks to Lois A. Harwood and Jack Lawson (Department of Fisheries and
Oceans) for alerting us to the presence of the blue whale strandings in
Newfoundland and for facilitating the process of allowing us to recover
the whales. Many thanks to the people of Trout River, Rocky Harbour and
Woody Point who were instrumental in partnering with us to salvage the
two blue whales that are central to this study. The authors also
acknowledge the support of Tonya Wimmer (Marine Animal Rescue Society)
for blue whale tissues and Kamal Khidas (Canadian Museum of Nature),
Michael McGowen, Darrin Lunde and John Ososky (Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History) for allowing us to sample their museum
collections, and Veronica Chevasco in assisting in optimizing protocols
for ancient DNA recovery. Additionally, we thank Hanne Garmel (The
Whaling Museum, Sandefjord, Norway), Haakon Livland (Slottsfjellsmuseet,
Tønsberg, Norway), and Hanneke Meijer (University Museum Bergen, Norway)
for help in providing historical samples and David William Peter Dolan
(Dept. of Informatics, University of Bergen) for
bioinformatic/infrastructure support. The genome sequencing and
bioinformatic analysis was made possible by the generous support of the
Alan and Patricia Koval Foundation, The Centre for Applied Genomics at
The Hospital for Sick Children, CanSeq150 by Canada’s Genomics
Enterprise (a Canada Foundation of Innovation Major Science Initiative
award), and a computing grant ‘Resource for Research Groups’ from
Compute Canada (2018-2020). The Norwegian Research Council ICE-whales
programme (no. 244488/E10) and Norwegian Polar Institute supported
collections of NE Atlantic blue whale tissues. The sequencing activities
at the Genomics Core Facility of the University of Bergen was supported
by the Fram Center Hazardous Substances Flagship Program (grant no.
602018), the Research Council of Norway (grant no. 245979/F50) and the
Trond Mohn Foundation (grant no. BFS2016-genom). The bioinformatic
analysis at the University of Bergen was provided through ELIXIR Norway,
Research Council of Norway grant 270068 (to the University of Bergen,
the University of Oslo, the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the Norwegian
University of Life Sciences: NMBU). The funding for salary of S.J. was
provided by a Rebanks post-doctoral fellowship and the Koval foundation.
S.W.S. was funded by the GlaxoSmithKline Endowed Chair in Genome
Sciences at the Hospital for Sick Children and University of Toronto.
L.L. is currently funded by the Lap-Chee Tsui Fellowship for Research
Excellence, though this work was started while she was at the ROM.