One of Hollywood's most beloved actors is using his name and celebrity to promote a crowdfunding effort for a non-invasive method of gathering whale data.

Patrick Stewart has publicly endorsed Ocean Alliance, a group based in Gloucester, U.K. developing drones called "snotbots," CBS Boston reported. The group filmed the knighted "Star Trek" and "X-Men" actor responding to invasive methods of sample collecting, equating it to how whale samples are traditionally extracted.

According to their Kickstarter page, Ocean Alliance aims to use the drones to "hover in the air above a surfacing whale and collect the blow (or snot) exhaled from its lungs." The researchers associated with the project will look for lung lining in the samples, which could indicate the whales' stress levels, among other characteristics.

Ocean Alliance wants to use drones because motorboats can be audibly troubling to whales, which have a heightened sense of hearing. Motorboats can also cause a spike in the animals' stress levels that would not have occurred naturally.

"If all your doctor knew about your health was from chasing you around the examination room, blasting an airhorn and jabbing you with a needle, wouldn't your chart would reflect that?" Ocean Alliance CEO Iain Kerr said in a statement to CBS Boston. "Snotbot is designed to remove that aspect of the research process."

As of Saturday morning, Ocean Alliance raised nearly $22,000 and have 31 days remaining to reach their goal of $225,000.

"Ideally, whale researchers should be positioned about half a mile away from their subjects, giving the whales plenty of room to go about their business," Ocean Alliance said on their Kickstarter page. "Dozens of technological hurdles had to be overcome in order to make the drones capable of collecting a physical sample at this distance in an uncontrolled marine environment."