Massive thanks to the locals for offering their bangkas and their time to help out, PH National Museum of Bohol, and the municipality of Getafe for offering their unused isolation facility for our accommodations, and the amazing food. What a way to end 2024 and start 2025. 🙌🏼

Managed to gather 40+ strong locals to help with the flensing and defleshing and disposal. Incredible teamwork. This is our reality as we operate in difficult conditions with limited access to equipment and funds.

Before making a plan to move the carcass to a shallower area on the 2nd day. See the local community watch from shore as we passed by. We finished the 2nd day at night. This effort was led by Balyena.org PI and founder Jom Acebes and myself.

What an epic 2024. lots of ups and downs. Ended the year with a 13.6m sperm whale necropsy. An extremely difficult and challenging work on a remote mangrove island with limited access. Had to work in waist deep waters

Early view available:

academic.oup.com/cz/advance-a...

MSc done. Now on to keep applying for a PhD and get accepted! Record so far from the beginning of this year, applied: 10, accepted: 0 🤣😭 don’t know whether to laugh or cry

Some cool interspecies interactions 🐬

I want this sticker! (as if i have a car 😂)

Love that these dolphins do the headstand on the regular 🤸 🦑
Unmistakable even from 5km away!

Random whale vertebra hanging outside a house on Pamilacan, an ex-whaling island. The island is named after the technique of using a large hook called ‘pilak’ to catch mobula rays. 🦑🐳🐋🐬

Hello! I’m Lico and i’m an MSc student in ph and epidemiology in HK studying infection dynamics in dolphins. I also work as a p/t RA on stranding investigation and virtopsy. I previously studied the ecology of coastal dolphin species and large whales. On the lookout for PhD opps for Fall ‘24 intake!

Checking out what’s going on this side of the socmediaverse 👋