Western Port Bay, on Victoria's south coast, is now a working port. Crude oil, LPG, steel and fuel move through it. In Bunurong Stories it is Wurnmarrinh, a place where women and young children once gathered to greet whales resting on their long journey to warmer waters, and where mothers and calves came together.
That combination is the heart of a new paper in Ecology and Evolution. Bunurong Elder Aunty Gail Dawson wrote five Stories about Bunwurrung women's connection to Warrinh Biik (Sea Country) and their Knowledge of marine mammals. Jemima Beddoe of RMIT University and the Marine Mammal Foundation, with Dawson, Jeff Shimeta and Kate Robb, then read those Stories against the published science on whales, dolphins and seals in Victorian waters, looking for where the two bodies of knowledge agree, where they complement each other, and where the Stories describe things no one has studied.
The method was deliberately slow. The team approached the Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation first, drafted a project plan, and sent it back for feedback and approval before anything began. Dawson responded to the community invitation and later approached Beddoe with the wish to share these Stories. No author other than Dawson edited their content or language. Beddoe did the initial thematic analysis; naming and reviewing the themes was done jointly with Dawson, so the interpretations reflected what the Stories were actually saying. A Bunurong artist, Jayde Halls, made five accompanying artworks. Ethics approval, a consent form, an authorship agreement and an Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property agreement all sit behind the work, the last of these confirming Dawson remains Custodian of her own Knowledge.
Dawson also reshaped the framing. Beddoe's original approach used the common metaphor of "weaving" Indigenous Knowledge and Western science together. Dawson felt that word did not fit here, and offered instead Walagunh Baanhbula: mixing two waters. It draws on the place where fresh water meets salt, an area of abundance and productivity. Not two strands laid alongside each other, but a genuine mixing.
What the Stories and the science both say
Four themes came out of the analysis: maternal care and social structure, long-term ecological observation, important habitats and movement pathways, and historical decline and recovery.
Several align closely with published research. The Stories describe mothers keeping calves close, suckling them, teaching them to find food, and grandmothers leading families and fighting to protect them. Across cetaceans, mothers and calves do stay together for long periods with heavy maternal investment. Menopause in whales occurs in species with matrilineal social systems, where older females appear to help by babysitting, sharing food and using accumulated knowledge to find resources. The Stories describe male dolphins forming gangs that work together to get close to females, and note that Bunwurrung women stay out of the water when they see this; the literature on bottlenose dolphins documents male alliances, sexual coercion and aggression toward females. Seal timing lines up too. Australian fur seals give birth in early summer and typically nurse for around ten months, matching the Story's account of mother seals feeding pups until Kuyingkuying, when spring turns to summer.
Other elements are harder to check, and that is the interesting part. The Stories describe a companionship between Baytayil (whale) and Barranan (dolphin), with the dolphin escorting returning pods into Naarm (Port Phillip Bay) and the two sharing news. Interactions between baleen whales and dolphins are documented globally, and one review found a quarter of them were positive, but their frequency in Victorian waters has not been examined. The Stories also describe whales returning from northwestern waters, which does not match the usual account of Victorian humpbacks travelling between Antarctic feeding grounds and Queensland breeding areas. The authors are careful here: it may reflect observation, historical movement, southern right whales rather than humpbacks, or a broader understanding of whale movement. They say it remains unclear and warrants investigation.
Western Port is the clearest gap. Sighting records logged since 1948 include 425 cetacean sightings there across at least thirteen species, and humpbacks have been recorded annually since 2014, with a high of 20 in 2025. Yet studies of how whales use the bay remain, in the authors' words, extremely limited.
Why it matters
The Stories reach back past the whaling and sealing records that form most historical baselines. An estimated 58,000 southern right whales were killed in Australia and New Zealand; roughly 216,000 humpbacks died in modern commercial whaling. Humpbacks have recovered to nearly 80 percent of pre-whaling numbers, southern rights to about 26 percent in Western Australia. Knowledge of where these animals were before that slaughter is thin.
This is one Elder's Knowledge, shared with community approval, and the authors stress it should not be read as speaking for all Bunurong or all Indigenous peoples. They also make clear the point was never to have science validate the Stories. What the work does offer is a set of specific, testable questions about places and relationships that current research has not prioritised, and a demonstration that this kind of collaboration takes more time than funding timelines usually allow.