From herding to search and rescue, dogs have essential jobs besides being man’s best friend. Dogs can now add a new title to their impressive resumes: oil detector.

Oil spills introduce millions of gallons of oil into the environment annually with devastating consequences. It can take years to clean up spills, especially since human surveyors struggle to detect all of the leaked oil.

With their impressive sense of smell, dogs could be the key to locating stray spots of oil that surveyors miss.

Environmental consultant Ed Owens and Paul Bunker, the owner and trainer for Chiron K9, a canine consultancy company, have joined forces to train dogs to discover hidden oil following spills.

After passing initial tests with flying colors, Owens and Bunker took the pack of oil-detecting hounds to an oil spill in Nova Scotia, Canada, for some real-world practice.

The results were impressive. The sharp-nosed canines uncovered all of the oil from a year-old shipwreck, even finding barely visible remnants that were missed by expert surveyors.

“Dogs’ noses are far more sensitive than any available technology,” Lucia Lazarowski, a cognitive and behavioral scientist at Auburn University, told Popular Mechanics regarding dogs’ ability to locate what devices cannot.