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.

🎉 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. 🐋

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