After a 2011 marine heatwave wiped out seagrass, Shark Bay bottlenose dolphin adult survival fell from 0.99 to 0.85 and the two gulf populations declined by 39% and 36%
Using 20 years (2003-2023) of dolphin photo-identification data, the study fitted a Bayesian Hidden Markov Model to estimate annual, age-class-specific survival probabilities, abundance and recruitment rate for Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in the western (WSB) and eastern (ESB) gulfs of Shark Bay, and related them to seagrass loss following the 2011 marine heatwave, finding adult survival fell from 0.99 (0.98-1.00) pre-MHW to 0.85 (0.79-0.90) post-MHW in WSB and from 0.96 (0.92-0.98) to 0.89 (0.85-0.