16.12.2017 – Sand – Sponge – Fish ball

Bottlenose dolphins, like we saw them today are intelligent animals with high capability to adapt. Their manifold hunting techniques are a good example. Bottlenose dolphins in shallow and sandy bays in Florida invented the following strategy to hunt: they swim around the fish, with the movement of their fluke they bring up the sandy ground, the fishes don’t dare to swim through the “barrier” so they want to escape and jump over barrier directly into the dolphin’s mouth.

Indo-Pacific Bottlenose dolphins in the West Australian (Bay Shark Bay) got famous for their so-called sponge technique. The dolphin is using a sponge over their beak to protect themselves from sharp edges of shells and corals (this is one theory). This technique to hunt is mostly passed from female dolphins to the next generation.

Off the coast of Madeira we observe often the so-called fish ball method, where the school of fishes comes very close together for protection (safety in numbers) but against the dolphins sonar the effectivity is limited.

By Fatima Kutzschbach

Sighting of the day

Stenella

15:00 Tursiops truncatus