Student gets travel grant to World Marine Mammal Conference

Thursday 29 August 2019

Master of Science student Emily Palmer is headed to Barcelona later this year, thanks to the Graduate Women North Shore Charitable Trust.

Student gets travel grant to World Marine Mammal Conference - image1

Emily Palmer in Massey post mortem laboratory.

Last updated: Thursday 19 May 2022

Master of Science student Emily Palmer is headed to Barcelona later this year, thanks to the Graduate Women North Shore Charitable Trust.

Miss Palmer will be able to travel to the conference in December, after receiving one of the Trust’s travel grants. The trust awards grants and scholarships to students at North Shore tertiary institutions, such as Massey’s Auckland campus, where Miss Palmer studies conservation biology under her supervisors Associate Professor Karen Stockin and Dr Emmy Betty.

At the conference, Miss Palmer will present a poster presentation on her previous research around sperm whale strandings in New Zealand. However, her Masters research has taken a different focus.

“My Masters in Conservation Biology focuses on the life history and reproduction of common dolphins (Delphinus sp.) in New Zealand,” Miss Palmer says. “Understanding a species’ ability to recover from population loss, via an understanding of reproduction, is of significant value in conservation management. Common dolphins experience significant mortalities due to their incidental capture in many commercial fisheries, including in New Zealand, common dolphins are a significant bycatch of the jack mackerel fishery. The aim of my research will be to clarify if density dependant factors are at play within the New Zealand population based on reproductive biology.”

Miss Palmer will examine growth and reproductive parameters including age at physical and sexual maturity, gestation, inter-calving intervals and pregnancy rates. This research represents the first in New Zealand, and only third internationally, to examine the reproductive biology of this species.

“This will create a published baseline upon which future changes to the New Zealand population can be benchmarked. In short, this will allow us to model how our common dolphin population is reacting to the bycatch, and it suffers within our fisheries, with the hope that we can detect and intercept any significant decline in the population before it reaches the stages of that reported for international populations.”

Over the summer, Miss Palmer undertook a summer research studentship, where she was involved in necropsies with Associate Professor Stockin and others from the Coastal Marine Research Group at Massey.

“Post mortems will be a big part of my masters research to gain the required parameters for reproductive analysis.”