Marine Vertebrate Ecology Lab
Hannah Davies
Hannah is a PhD student at the MAVE Lab, BEAM Lab and CIEHF. She completed a Bachelor of Marine Science, minoring in Earth and Environmental Science, at the University of Wollongong in 2024, and an Honours degree in 2025. Her interests include behavioural ecology, marine conservation, and how the intersect of humanities and science can help address ecological challenges. Previously, Hannah interned with the NSW Government Office of Energy and Climate Change, and volunteered in a PhD lab assisting with the dissection of sea urchins from barren vs non-barren reef areas.
Research
Hanna's PhD research uses decades of whale and dolphin stranding records from across Australia and New Zealand to understand how their occurrence is changing through space and time. Because cetaceans are difficult to monitor in the wild, long-term stranding data provide a valuable window into broad patterns in their distribution. I will be analysing where strandings cluster along coastlines, how patterns differ between species and ecological groups, and how environmental factors like ocean temperature and climate cycles influence these trends. By combining this data with environmental modelling, my work aims to improve our understanding of how climate change may be reshaping cetacean occurrence around Australia and New Zealand.
Supervisers: Dr Katharina J Peters, Prof Sarah Hamylton, Dr Frédérik Saltré (University of Technology Sydney), Dr Adelaide Dedden (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service), and Prof Karen Stockin.