Academic Education

BSc. Marine biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. 2015 – 2018.
M.Sc. Marine biology, Department of Marine biology, School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa. Magna Cum Laude. Dean’s excellency award for outstanding thesis. 2019 –2021.
PhD student in marine biology, Department of Marine biology, University of Haifa. Part of Project CETI, 2021 – Today.

Background

Yaly Mevorach is a marine scientist specializing in cetacean bioacoustics and communication, with a research background spanning coastal dolphin ecology and deep-diving whale behavior. She completed her master’s at the University of Haifa’s Charney School of Marine Sciences, where she analyzed two decades of photo-identification data to assess the abundance and social structure of bottlenose and common dolphin populations along the Israeli coast. Yaly is currently in her final year as a PhD student with Project CETI (the Cetacean Translation Initiative), based at a remote field site in Dominica, where she studies sperm whale acoustic communication and its relationship to social behavior using hydrophone arrays, machine learning, and bioacoustic analysis. In Israel, she is among the leaders of the Deep-Sea Cetacean Project (funded by the Ministry of Energy) and the Israeli Dolphin Project, studying the abundance and distribution of deep-sea dolphins and whales in the EEZ of Israel to promote responsible use of marine resources and informed conservation. Yaly is passionate about bringing internationally developed research methods and technology home to build the still-emerging field of deep-diving cetacean science in Israel and the eastern Mediterranean.

Current research

Yaly is currently in her last year of her PhD, working on her final publication and thesis. The Israeli deep sea cetacean project she is leading, is also in its final year of the current budget and Yaly is working on the final analysis, report and publication. She is looking for an interesting post doc in the field of marine mammals and bioacoustics.

Publications

1. Mevorach, Y., Scheinin, A., Galili, O., Santostasi, NL and Tchernov, D (2022). Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) in Israel: Unique dynamics of a critically endangered population. Front. Mar. Sci. 9:916950. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2022.916950
2. Mevorach, Y., Galili, O., Bigal, E., Goffman, O., Roditi‐Elasar, M., Zuriel, Y., … & Scheinin, A. (2025). Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) Along the Coast of Israel: Abundance and Social Structure. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, 35(8), e70181.
3.  Galili, O., Goffman, O., Roditi-Elasar, M., Mevorach, Y., Bigal, E., Zuriel, Y., … & Scheinin, A. (2023). Two Decades of Coastal Dolphin Population Surveys in Israel, Eastern Mediterranean. Biology, 12(2), 328.
4. Gnone, G., Bellingeri, M., Airoldi, S., Gonzalvo, J., …Mevorach, Y., … & Azzellino, A. (2023). Cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea: Encounter Rate, Dominant Species, and Diversity Hotspots. Diversity, 15(3), 321.
5. Gubnitsky, G., Mevorach, Y., Gero, S., Gruber, D. F., & Diamant, R. (2024). Automatic Detection and Annotation of Sperm Whale Codas. arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.17119.
6. Gnone, G., Bellingeri, M., Airoldi, S., Gonzalvo, J., …Mevorach, Y., … & Azzellino, A. (2025). Investigating the presence of different bottlenose dolphin ecotypes in the Mediterranean Sea. Scientific Reports.
7. Gubnitky, G., Mevorach, Y., Tchernov, D., & Diamant, R. (2025). Source Separation of Sperm Whales’ Echolocation Clicks. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing.
8. Mevorach, Y., Maalouf, A., Gubnitsky, G., Tønnesen, P., Gruber, D. F., Rus, D., … & Gero, S. (2025). Predicting mesoscale movement of sperm whale units in the Caribbean based on social dynamics. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 39150.
9. Description of a collaborative sperm whale birth and shifts in coda vocal styles during key events. Aluma, Y., Baron, Z., Barrett, R., Baumgartner, C., Beguš, G., Mevorach, Y., Bhattacharya, S., Bronstein, M.M., Dahan, S., Davis, O., De Haas, S. & Defoe, J. Scientific Reports, 16(1), 9206