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2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – State and Trend – Dolphins and porpoises

Created 21/12/2025

Updated 21/12/2025

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The Marine chapter of the 2021 State of the Environment (SoE) report incorporates multiple expert templates developed from streams of marine data. This metadata record describes the Expert Assessment "State and Trend of dolphins and porpoises". A PDF of the full Expert Assessment, including figures and tables (where provided) is downloadable in the "On-line Resources" section of this record as "EXPERT ASSESSMENT 2021 - Dolphins and Porpoises"

DESCRIPTION OF TAXONOMIC GROUP FOR EXPERT ASSESSMENT Following taxonomic standards, 20 dolphin species in the Family Delphinidae and one species in the Family Phocoenidae are known to occur in Australian waters (Table 1). A number of these species (e.g. common dolphins, Delphinus delphis) are distributed nationally, others are restricted to particular latitudes (e.g. dusky dolphin, Lagenorhychus obscurus) and others consist of populations that are highly restricted to embayments and tributaries within particular regions (e.g. the endemic Australian snubfin dolphin, Orcaella heinsohni). Since the 2016 State of the Environment (SoE) report further insights into the spatial distribution of Australian snubfin dolphin (Blue Planet Marine 2019, Bouchet et al. 2021), Australian humpback dolphins (Sousa sahulensis; Parra and Cagnazzi 2015, Hanf et al. 2016, Hunt et al. 2017; Raudino et al. 2018a, Raudino et al. 2018b, Blue Planet Marine 2019, Burns et al. 2019, Hunt et al. 2020), Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus, Raudino et al. 2018a, Blue Planet Marine 2019, Burns et al. 2019, Haughey et al. 2020), common dolphins (Delphinus delphis, Mason et al. 2016) and orca (Orcinus orca, Jones et al. 2019, Salgado-Kent et al. 2020) have been established.

DATA STREAM(S) USED IN EXPERT ASSESSMENT Assessment based on review of literature published since the 2016 SoE assessment – see references for spatial and temporal coverage of data incorporated into assessments.

2021 SOE ASSESSMENT SUMMARY [see attached Expert Assessment for full details]

• 2021 • Assessment grade: Good Assessment trend: Unclear Confidence grade: Limited evidence or limited consensus Confidence trend: Limited evidence or limited consensus Comparability: Grade and trend are comparable to the 2016 assessment • 2016 • Assessment grade: Good Assessment trend: Unclear Confidence grade: Limited evidence or limited consensus Confidence trend: Limited evidence or limited consensus Comparability: Grade and trend are somewhat comparable to the 2011 assessment • 2011 • Assessment grade: Good Assessment trend: Stable Confidence grade: Limited evidence or limited consensus Confidence trend: Limited evidence or limited consensus

CHANGES SINCE 2016 SOE ASSESSMENT Assessment has not changed.

Files and APIs

Tags

Additional Info

Field Value
Title 2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – State and Trend – Dolphins and porpoises
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/0cbdcca6-fb89-41ab-b8f5-a061f973e729
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
info@aodn.org.au
Reference Period 13/09/2021
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Australian Oceans Data Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Australian Oceans Data Network "2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – State and Trend – Dolphins and porpoises". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://catalogue.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/2021-state-of-the-environment-report-marine-chapter-expert-assessment-state-and-trend-dolphins-