[1] Dell studied at Mount Albert Grammar School and later at the Auckland University College.
[2] After the war, Dell was offered a job as malacologist at the Dominion Museum, where he started to standardise the cabinets and built up a collection of more than 30,000 specimens.
In the meantime, he took a master's degree in Science at Victoria University College, with a pioneering thesis on cephalopods, octopuses and squid.
[1] Soon after, Dell started to work on Antarctic collections, with among others Alan Beu and Winston Ponder.
[1] In 1965 Dell was a participant in the Royal Society Expedition to the British Solomon Islands Protectorate.
In 1990, he published his standard work Antarctic Mollusca with special reference to the Fauna of the Ross Sea.