Dr Elanor Bell — whale researcher

Scientists of the Antarctic: Dr Elanor Bell

Video transcript

My role particularly has two facets. Firstly, I'm a researcher; I get to go out in the field and work with whales. In particular, I've worked with humpback whales, minke whales and Antarctic blue whales.

The importance of the research that we do within the Southern Ocean Research Partnership (SORP) is to work collaboratively to develop new techniques to study whales without harming them and to apply that to conservation management.

So for example, we can use these sophisticated tagging techniques - satellite tagging is one of them - and we've also developed acoustic tracking techniques that we can apply, and these allow us to track whales over vast distances. We can go and we can individually photograph them, work out how many animals there are, and then we can look at whether the population's recovering after that terrible exploitation they suffered.

In many cases the whales I work with are humpback whales, minke whales, Antarctic blue whales - that prey on Antarctic krill. Antarctic krill is harvested by humans. So we can feed information about how whales and krill (their prey) interact, to international bodies that regulate krill fishing to make sure there is enough for whales, and there is enough for humans.

We can also look at areas in terms of establishing Marine Protected Areas that will protect the whales and their prey, and remove - or at least reduce - the human impacts on them so that they're safe and conserved into the future.

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Dr Elanor Bell: BSc (Hons), PhD

Research interests

I am a microbial ecologist by training but have turned my hand from studying whale food to the whales themselves. I started work at the Australian Antarctic Division in early 2012, and combine my passions for conservation and the polar marine environment with experience of coordinating multi-national research projects in my role managing the IWC’s Southern Ocean Research Partnership. IWC-SORP is an international consortium of over 100 scientists from 13 different nations that all believe whales do not need to be killed to study them. We are working together to develop new leading-edge techniques that will enhance our research, and to collect data that are important for the management and conservation of whales. These data are contributed to international fora such as the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

I have spent a great deal of time in Antarctica working both at sea and on the continent, including two winters spent at Davis research station. My research has ranged from studying tiny viruses and bacteria to working with the largest animal on the planet, the Antarctic blue whale. Whale research at the Australian Antarctic Division is excitingly multidisciplinary. For example, we study predator-prey interactions in order to determine whether krill swarm shape affects whale distribution and behaviour in the Southern Ocean. We also aim to determine whether the whales themselves fertilise their local environment with their poo, stimulating the growth of algae, which are food for the krill, which in turn become food for the whales.

Current projects

National & international collaborations

International Whaling Commission — IWC Southern Ocean Research Partnership projects
University Of Auckland, New Zealand
Marine Mammal Laboratory — Alaska Fisheries Science Centre, USA
Provincetown Centre for Coastal Studies, USA
UC Santa Cruz, USA
Southwest Fisheries Science Center/NMFS/NOAA, USA
University of Pretoria, South Africa
Marine Mammal Institute, Oregon State University, USA
Fundación Cethus, Argentina
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Brazil
Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, Italy
ENSTA Bretagne, France
University of Hamburg, Germany
Centro de Conservacion Cetacea, Chile
Odyssea, Luxembourg
Institute of Marine Research, Norway

Key outcome areas

International Whaling Commission (IWC)
IWC’s Southern Ocean Research Partnership (IWC-SORP)
Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR)
Australian State and Commonwealth government stakeholders

Publications

Bell, E.M., van den Hoff, J., Whittock, L. 2020 Dimorphism in the Antarctic cryptophyte Geminigera cryophila (Cryptophyceae). Journal of Phycology, DOI doi.org/10.1111/jpy.13004

Miller, B.S., Calderan, S., Miller, E.J., Širović, A., Stafford, K., Bell, E., Double, M.C. (2019) A passive acoustic survey for marine mammals conducted during the 2019 Antarctic voyage on Euphausiids and Nutrient Recycling in Cetacean Hotspots (ENRICH). Acoustics 2019.

van den Hoff, J., Bell, E.M. 2015. The ciliate Mesodinium rubrum and its cryptophyte prey in Antarctic aquatic environments. Polar Biology, 38(8): 1305-1310, DOI 10.1007/s00300-015-1686-z.

Bell, E.M. (Ed.) 2012. Life at Extremes: Environments, Organisms and Strategies for Survival. CAB International, Wallingford, United Kingdom, 554 pp.

See more of Dr Bell's publications on Google Scholar.

This content was last updated 4 years ago on 6 June 2020.