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A New Discovery at Shark Bay World Heritage Site

A New Discovery at Shark Bay World Heritage Site

This month I took a trip to Perth, Australia to present a poster at the 25th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals. While there is always so much to learn and get excited about at these conferences, the highlight of my trip turned out to be my post-conference excursion to the Shark Bay World Heritage site.

Hoping to see some of the marine wildlife unique to Western Australia, I booked a boat trip with Perfect Nature Cruises to tour the turquoise waters of Shark Bay. But I kept my expectations low – having worked in dolphin and whale tourism, I know that no wildlife spotting is ever guaranteed. I was therefore ecstatic when we encountered dugongs AND  Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins – that were sponging!

“Sponging is a very special case of tool use – it is unique to Shark Bay’s dolphins and even there, only about one in nine individuals do it. The vast majority of them are female. A genetic analysis revealed that the technique passes down almost exclusively from mother to daughter

Ed Yong

 

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