Dolphins Filmed Catching Fish With Seashells For First Time Ever

Dolphins are widely recognised as one of the ocean’s most intelligent animals. Now, researchers have captured the first-ever footage of the cetaceans using seashells to help them catch fish.

Credit: UniSC

The behaviour was recorded by researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) off Hervey Bay in Queensland, Australia. “We were on a research boat off Hervey Bay when we spotted a dolphin raising something large out of the water,” says animal behaviouralist and marine mammal expert Alexis Levengood, who led the study, published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. “I started screaming because I know what shelling looks like.”

‘Shelling’ is “a hunting behaviour where dolphins chase fish into large empty shells, bring the shell to the surface and then shake it to drain the fish into their mouths,” explains Levengood. “We were able to record footage and take photographs of dolphins shelling in the Great Sandy Marine Park, which is the first published record of it on the east coast of Australia,” she told BBC Wildlife Magazine.

Prior to this record, the only published evidence of dolphins shelling was at Shark Bay in Western Australia - but no footage was captured there.

As if catching the rare behaviour on camera wasn’t exciting enough, the researchers also noticed an adult female dolphin and calf shelling together, suggesting that the skill is being passed from one generation to the next.