After almost a year(!!) of my PhD, I am excited to start my 3-month placement at @rothamsted.bsky.social 🌱 I shall miss this lovely group at St Andrews @animalsdoingstuff.bsky.social @mikemwebster.bsky.social @lrendell.bsky.social but I'm sure I'll be back to the sea before I know it! 🌊🐟🦀

File under "no s**t Sherlock" 🙄

Better late than never but had such a great time last month helping Whitehead lab collect body condition and photo id on northern bottlenose whales in the Gully MPA - see 🧵 for cool whale videos!🐳🦑⛵

TACO Don is selling Ukraine down the river. Time for UK/EU and it's citizens to step up, good to see this effort! Please consider donating to Come Back Alive savelife.in.ua/en/donate-en... www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Spotting whales for the boat team at the lighthouse in the Southern Lagoon, New Caledonia 🐳 🎶 @solenederville.bsky.social @francae.bsky.social @seamammalresearch.bsky.social @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @entropie-marinelab.bsky.social

Humpback whale fieldwork 2025: the season is well underway in the Southern Lagoon, New Caledonia @solenederville.bsky.social @seamammalresearch.bsky.social @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @entropie-marinelab.bsky.social @francae.bsky.social

New 2 year post-doc position on cultural adaptation in complex environmental management.

New paper Exploring the biodiversity of cetacean communities along the western North Atlantic Ocean shelf-break led by Samara Haver. One finding: "beaked whale species [were] the most significant driver of differences among cetacean communities" 🐳🌍🦑🧪 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Orca snogging?! Wild tongues!? 🤭🙄 Tongue nibbling is a fascinating behaviour, but make no mistake, this paper is a sordid piece of propaganda attempting to sanitise two ethically dubious ways of economically exploiting these animals - spicy opinions here: www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...

I really enjoyed presenting some preliminary results from my PhD work at the St Andrews Biology PGR conference today! It was great to see all the cool work coming out of our community as well 🦀🐟🔊 (thanks to @mikemwebster.bsky.social and @lrendell.bsky.social as always)

Huge shoutout to @anacanadas.bsky.social and the MGEL team for this ambitious effort! A massive collaborative dataset, rigorous modeling & timely insight into Mediterranean cetaceans—especially sperm whales. Incredible work presented at #ECSconference2025 🐋🧪 #MarineConservation #MGEL #OceanScience

JASA 'Scilight' of @angelaamlin.bsky.social's new paper here: pubs.aip.org/aip/sci/arti... 🐋🦭🦑

New paper 🚨 very excited to see Angela Amlin's first PhD paper confirming the underwater vocal repertoire of Mediterranean monk seals published 🦑🦭🐋 @gordonhastie.bsky.social @joan-gonzalvo.bsky.social @seamammalresearch.bsky.social pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/art...

My new skincare routine is amazing - folks out here spotting me as an undergrad! Follow for my exclusive how-to videos 🤣 Appeals to authority are rarely advisable, but uninformed ones can be embarrassing. There is an important debate about the 'AI to translate whales' fad, but this ain't it. 🐋

🐳Come join us for a Whale of a Weekend in Dundee from 26-29 June! Some of our team will be part of a panel on June 28, sharing tales about studying whales in South Georgia 🐳 🧪@southgeorgiahertiagetrust @FOSGI Go to for more information: sght.org/woaw/

Interested in biology and comparative psychology, and working in an interdisciplinary project and research team? I’m advertising two PhD positions on the evolutionary origins of cooperative sociality and communication (start 1.10.) at the University of Konstanz👇 links below!

Mum's in the news again... www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdee...

Folks, Sara Niksic / Inner Child is fundraising for the next iteration of her phenomenal whale song/music science communication project - please consider a small donation to help make this happen 🎶🦑🐋 whydonate.com/en/fundraisi...

Alec Burslem @alecburslem.bsky.social presented his new non invasive method for measuring body composition in sperm whales - low impact and generalisable 👏👏👏 @seamammalresearch.bsky.social #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑🧪

Narwhal narhwals because they are so awesome! Marie Louis @mariels.bsky.social shows recent but strong divergence in narwhal populations on different sides of Greenland maybe by learned migratory routes #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑🧪

Dani Noreña @dnorename.bsky.social, #MSc_MMS_St_A graduate working ierh @asociaciontursiops.bsky.social showed that body condition in sperm whales north of Menorca support the establishment of an MPA in that area 👏 #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑

Katie Rapson @katie-rapson.bsky.social did a great job presenting 3D tracking of harbour porpoise around experimental tidal energy installations - another #MSc_MMS_St_A graduate presenting at #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑

Inspiring plenary from Joe Roman about 'lifting baselines' and quantifying the effects whale real red ecological pathways have on nutrient cycling and transfer in the oceans - check out his latest contribution here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑🧪

What a privilege to present our work side by side with these great researchers. 💧🐋🫧🪸🦭💦 @erc4oceans.bsky.social

Maybe I am biased because I'm her co-supervisor but I thought this was a smashing talk by Angela Amlin about using automated remote camera systems to monitor the effects of boat traffic on monk seal haulout cave usage @seamammalresearch.bsky.social @joan-gonzalvo.bsky.social #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑🦭🧪

Marine mammals in the anthropocene - systematic review of publications on threats to marine mammals by @emily-hague.bsky.social identifies key knowledge gaps - also @seamammalresearch.bsky.social #2 in the contributions league table after NOAA! #ECSconference2025 🦑🐋🧪

A fascinating plenary from Cristina Brito @crisbri.bsky.social about the hugely ambitious 4 Oceans project (novaresearch.unl.pt/en/prizes/4-...) collating historical interactions between humans and marine life #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑🧪

Super complex but important work by @anacanadas.bsky.social who modelled Mediterranean cetacean abundance using multiple data sources - estimates of total sperm whale abundance had no upper ci above 5.5k supporting recent 'Endangered' IUCN listing doi.org/10.2305/IUCN... #ECSconference2025 🧪🐋🦑

Augusta Hollers #MSc_MMS_St_A graduate presenting new information on humpback mother-calf energy transfer measured by body condition 🥳 #ECSconference2025 🦑🐋🧪

The role of acoustics when pilot whales mob-harass orcas revealed - playbacks of pilot whale calls made brave Sir Orca run away 🤣 Great study by @annaselbmann.bsky.social 👏 #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑

The role of acoustics when pilot whales mob-harass orcas revealed - playbacks of pilot whale calls made brave Sir Orca run away 🤣 Great study by @annaselbmann.bsky.social 👏

Bruno Diaz-Lopez presents evidence that male bottlenose dolphins show social aging, becoming less central in their social networks as they age... #ECSconference2025 🦑🐋

Hal Whitehead highlights mobility, cooperation, large brains, and culture as common drivers of societal complexity in the context of anonymous societies sensu Moffet 2025 - but territoriality is a contrast #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑🧪

Here we go. Kicking off with the brilliant work of L. Rendell and colleagues. Myself, going back to origins or living a full circle moment in #marinemammal research, history and conservation. Tomorrow the #bluehumanities are coming to the #ECSconference2025

Operationalising the conservation of cetacean cultures - Mark Simmonds highlights that the challenges of identifying units to conserve remains, but the engagement of the Convention on Migratory Species is helping a lot! #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑🧪

Marie-Anne Blanchet showed male sperm whales in N Atlantic making extraordinary but unsynchronised movements between feeding and breeding - so great to finally get some insights into this mysterious part of sperm whale lives! #ECSconference2025 🦑🐋

Fascinating data suggesting maintenance migrations in Northern bottlenose whales! #ECSconference2025 🐋🦑

#ECSconference2025 let's go oooo!! 🐋🦑🧪

I will forever be haunted by this footage. Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity. What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives. 🌎🦑🧪

When the weather is good in the Scottish western Isles are hard to beat! ⛵ #sailing #scotland hwdt.org

TLDR: new paper headed up by @vestaeleuteri.bsky.social & with an awesome team, incl @andrearavignani.bsky.social , showing chimps have rhythm in their drumming & differences b/w east & west drum rhythms! www.cell.com/current-biol... But didn’t we know this already you ask? Well… 🧵1/16

Wonderful cover, and amazing research by Zhang et al. - they used classic Chinese poetry that mentions the Yangtze finless porpoise (724 poems in total!) to estimate the range contraction of the species over the last 1400 years. Such a creative approach to generate truly novel data!

Such a great time doing a Floating Classroom with hwdt.org - Best module feedback I ever got 🤣 isleofrumprimary.wordpress.com/2025/05/02/a... 🐋🦑

New paper! Very happy to have been invited to join the effort led by @anaeg.bsky.social to bring together an impressive team to try and wreslte with the conservation implications of our findings about culture in Pacific sperm whales. Trabajo fenomenal Ana! 🐋🦑🧪

Super chuffed to be part of this crew! 😎🐋🦑🧪

I didn't see the talk but I examined the PhD so I know how great it is! 🐋

Congratulations Dr Aubin! A worthy defense of a fantastic thesis, follow @jaclynaubin.bsky.social for the many insights about these super fascinating animals to come from this PhD... 🐋🦑🧪

Whisper in a state of undress Saturday getting ready and then fully clothed (and booking it at 6kts) on her first outing today #Sailing ⛵ #Fife

Won the weather lottery for a great week training up our #MSc_MMS_St_A students for their powerboat level 2 certs!

Interesting article in Science today about why we should safeguard animal cultures too doi.org/10.1126/scie...