CEBEL

🌊 Happy World Ocean Day 2026! 🌊

This year’s theme, “Strong Marine Protected Areas for Our Blue Planet”, highlights the urgent need to protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans and advance the ratification of the High Seas Treaty.

At the Cetacean Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution Lab (CEBEL) at Flinders University, our research helps improve understanding and conservation of whales, dolphins and other marine mammals in South Australian waters and beyond. 🐬🐳

Healthy oceans and effective marine protection are essential for safeguarding marine biodiversity and the ecosystems on which we all depend.

This World Ocean Day, we celebrate our blue planet and support global efforts to secure a healthier future for our oceans.

Great presentations by Flinders marine scientists yesterday at the Winter Whale Fest in Victor Harbor, including our own Cristina Vicente.

Cristina shared insights from her PhD research on the dolphins of the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary, as well as a broader synthesis of findings from CEBEL researchers on the health and status of this important dolphin population.

Congratulations, Cris, on an excellent presentation and for showcasing the valuable research being conducted on Adelaide’s dolphins! 🐬👏

Amazing opportunity for volunteers to join a Southern Right Whale expedition this winter on the beautiful Eyre Peninsula 🐳🐳🐳

🎉 Congratulations to our former Honours student and current PhD candidate, Bridgette O'Shannessy, on receiving the prestigious F.G. Wood Memorial Scholarship Award from the Society for Marine Mammalogy!
Named in honour of Forest G. Wood, a founder of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, the award recognises the best student paper published in Marine Mammal Science between successive Biennial Conferences on the Biology of Marine Mammals. Bridgette's paper, "Decadal Shifts in Southern Right Whale (Eubalaena australis) Recovery in South Australian Waters: Implications for Conservation and Management", was selected by the journal's Board of Editors from all eligible student-led publications during this period.

The study provides important new insights into the recovery of southern right whales in South Australian waters and demonstrates the immense value of long-term ecological research for informing conservation and management.

While the award is presented to Bridgette as lead student author, it also reflects the contributions of many funding agencies, organisations, researchers, students, collaborators and community members over several decades.

As part of the award, Bridgette has been invited to present the research as a keynote speaker at the Society for Marine Mammalogy Biennial Conference in Puerto Rico this October—an outstanding achievement and a wonderful opportunity to showcase this work on the international stage.

We are incredibly proud of Bridgette and grateful to everyone who has contributed to this long-term research program. This award is a testament to the power of collaboration, persistence, and long-term monitoring in advancing marine mammal science and conservation.

Congratulations, Bridgette! 🐋👏

Congratulations to Bridgette O’Shannessy on receiving the 2026 F. G. Wood Award for her outstanding paper, “Decadal shifts in southern right whale (Eubalaena australis) recovery in South Australian waters: implications for conservation and management,” published in Marine Mammal Science ✨
Drawing on 30 years of monitoring data, Bridgette’s research reveals that southern right whale recovery is far from uniform, with growth rates varying across key reproductive habitats in South Australia. Her findings highlight the importance of habitat connectivity, adaptive conservation management, and continued protection as whale populations respond to changing environmental conditions.
This prestigious award recognizes a significant contribution to marine mammal science and includes an invitation to deliver a plenary talk at the 2026 Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Puerto Rico this October.
Congratulations, Bridgette! We look forward to celebrating your achievement and hearing your plenary presentation in Puerto Rico. 🐋

🎓 Congratulations to Riley West-Thompson on the successful presentation and submission of his Honours thesis, “Begging for trouble? Persistent begging is associated with changes in space use, behaviour, and social connectivity of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in Whyalla, South Australia.”

Riley's research investigated the ecological and behavioural consequences of dolphin begging behaviour and provides valuable insights to support the conservation and management of this SA dolphin population.

A big thank you to the South Australian Department for Environment and Water for funding and supporting this important research.

🐬 Research Highlights

• Estimated population size of approximately 60 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Whyalla, South Australia.
• Ten individuals were identified as persistent beggars, repeatedly seeking food handouts.
• Begging dolphins showed a 90% smaller core home range than non-beggars, centred around the Whyalla Marina.
• Beggars associated more frequently with other beggars, suggesting changes in social connectivity.
• Dolphins engaging in begging had more than twice as many skin lesions as non-beggars.
• Groups containing more beggars were more likely to exhibit milling behaviour, indicating altered activity patterns.
• Findings demonstrate that begging and food provisioning is associated with changes in space use, behaviour, health, and social relationships in wild dolphins.

This Honours project provides important evidence to support management actions aimed at reducing the impacts of food provisioning on wild dolphin populations.

Excited to share our new paper published in Molecular Ecology exploring the evolutionary history and adaptive divergence of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) across Australian coastal waters.

A huge congratulations to lead author Svenja Marfurt and all co-authors and collaborators involved in this fantastic collaborative effort.

Using whole-genome sequencing from dolphins sampled across tropical, subtropical and temperate regions around Australia, we found that:

🐬 Population structure closely mirrors the Australian coastline, revealing distinct east, west and South Australian lineages.

🌏 Demographic analyses suggest a northern origin followed by independent north-to-south colonisation pathways along both coasts.

🧬 Putatively adaptive genomic regions showed strong tropical–temperate differentiation, suggesting parallel adaptation to similar environmental conditions despite large geographic separation.

🌡️ Temperature emerged as a major driver of adaptive divergence, highlighting how environmental gradients shape evolutionary processes in coastal marine predators.

🌊 The findings also suggest the potential presence of ecotype-like structuring across Australian waters, with important implications for conservation under accelerating climate change.

This study highlights the importance of integrating adaptive genomic variation, not just neutral population structure, into marine conservation planning.

Read all about it here: https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.70383

Join Flinders University marine researchers at this year’s Winter Whale Fest in Victor Harbor for talks on Adelaide dolphins, South Australian snapper, and Victor Harbor’s shifting shores. 🐬🐟🌊

Saturday 6 June, 11:30 am–12:30 pm, SA Whale Centre, Victor Harbor. Bookings are essential via the link below.

Dolphins, Snapper & Shifting Shores – Flinders University — Winter Whale Fest, Victor Harbor Celebrate the remarkable marine life of the Fleurieu and Adelaide Coast and explore the inspiring work of Flinders University marine researchers. Discover how science is helping protect dolphins and other marine wildlife, support the recovery of snapper stocks, and improve our understanding of wave

A huge congratulations to our Honours student Abbey for successfully presenting her Honours research seminar: “Nurseries Near the City: Identifying Mother–Calf Hotspots of Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) off the Adelaide Metropolitan Coast, South Australia.” 🎉🐬

Abbey’s research explored how mother–calf groups of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins use coastal habitats along one of Australia’s most urbanised coastlines, helping identify important nursery areas and the environmental factors associated with their occurrence. Her work provides valuable baseline information to support the conservation and management of this near-threatened population.

Well done Abbey on all your hard work and an excellent seminar presentation, an exciting contribution to our understanding of dolphin ecology and conservation in South Australia! 👏🌊

A special thank you to Temptation Sailing for their ongoing help and support throughout this project, and for providing an invaluable platform to help advance marine mammal research along the Adelaide coast.

🐬✨ How close do dolphins need to be to count as a group?

Defining what counts as an animal “group” might sound simple, but for highly mobile species such as dolphins it has long been surprisingly difficult and often subjective. Dolphins are constantly moving, joining, and leaving groups, making their social boundaries incredibly fluid.

In new research led by PhD student Anna Christie from the Cetacean Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution Lab (CEBEL), we used drones, machine learning, and spatial analysis to measure how close Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins stay to one another in the wild.

🐬📏 By analysing thousands of distance measurements between dolphins in Coffin Bay, South Australia, the study identified objective spatial thresholds that help define dolphin group membership:

📏 ~18 m nearest-neighbour distance
📏 ~24 m inter-individual distance

The research also showed that dolphin spacing changes dynamically with:

🔹 Sighting size (number of individuals)
🔹 Age composition (presence of calves and juveniles)
🔹 Behavioural state (foraging, travelling, socialising, resting)

For example, dolphins spread further apart while feeding, but stay much closer together during social interactions.

Importantly, this provides one of the first objective, data-driven ways to define dolphin groups, an approach that could also help scientists study other social animals where group boundaries are difficult to see directly.

Congratulations to Anna Christie and co-authors Andrew Colefax, Charlie White, and Guido J. Parra on this publication in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! 👏

Read and share here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-026-03743-3