A Clever New Fishing Method, 'Conching,' is the Latest Trend Spreading Among Australia's Hippest Bottlenose Dolphins
That's Some Seriously Sick Conching, Bro "Conching," a means of fishing using conch shells as traps, is the newest craze among Western Australia's Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins. Murdoch University Attention hipsters and other people seeking hipness: there's a new fad catching on in Western Australia's Shark Bay, and you won't want to be the last to to post pictures of yourself imitating it to your Tumblr feed. "Conching" is a method by which Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins are trapping small fish in conch shells, bringing the shells to the surface, and then shaking them with their rostrums to clear out the water and dump the fish into their mouths. More remarkably, the trend appears to be spreading throughout an entire population of dolphins, and fast. The first isolated instances of conching were recorded in 2007 and 2009 among a small group of Shark Bay's dolphins. But other dolphins seem to be observing that...
Read the whole article on PopSci
More from PopSci
Related
- Scientists are first to 'unlock' the mystery of creating cultured pearls from the queen conchWed, 4 Nov 2009, 2:57:17 EST
- Dolphin population stunted by fishing activities, Scripps/NOAA study findsMon, 24 Nov 2008, 14:08:01 EST
- Dolphins get a lift from delta wing technologyFri, 26 Jun 2009, 6:43:11 EDT
- Commercial fishing endangers dolphin populationsThu, 4 Feb 2010, 10:02:48 EST
- New research shows dolphin by-catch includes genetic relativesWed, 15 Dec 2010, 17:33:14 EST