For the first time, cameras have captured bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay using a remarkable hunting technique that involves sea sponges. The footage, featured in the BBC Earth series Blue Planet III, shows how the animals use the sponges as part of their approach to catching prey on coral reefs, and it answers a question that observers have long asked about the behavior.
Dolphins carrying sponges have been seen in the area for years, but until now the purpose of the habit had not been documented on film. The new sequence connects the practice directly to hunting. The broadcaster presents it as the first time this technique has been recorded by cameras, which gives the footage its significance for researchers and viewers alike.
Blue Planet III is presented by David Attenborough and returns to uncover extraordinary new stories and lives hidden beneath the world's oceans. The series is available through BBC Earth, which describes its content as dramatic, rare and exclusive, and viewers can stream the full series through the services listed by the broadcaster and by a separate guide to watching the show published by Live Science.
Shark Bay lies on the western coast of Australia and is recognized as a World Heritage site, a designation tied to its marine environment and seagrass meadows. Its bottlenose dolphins are part of a marine community that has been studied for decades, and the new footage adds to a growing body of evidence about tool use and learned behavior among marine mammals. Sponge carrying is understood to be a learned behavior in this population, passed on within the community rather than an instinct shared by every dolphin.
The filming required patience and close observation of animals working over coral reefs, where prey can be hard to reach and where the environment is difficult to study in open water. By capturing the technique on camera, the production gives viewers a rare look at a strategy that has been practiced by these dolphins. Blue Planet III continues the series' tradition of combining natural history with new scientific discovery, and the Shark Bay sequence stands as one of its clearest examples of an animal behavior revealed for the first time on screen.