{"id":21094,"date":"2025-07-25T12:29:29","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T12:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/21094\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T12:29:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T12:29:29","slug":"i-didnt-know-what-i-was-looking-at-drone-films-one-of-earths-rarest-and-weirdest-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/21094\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;I didn\u2019t know what I was looking at&#8221;: drone films one of Earth&#8217;s rarest and weirdest animals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A videographer in Western Australia was amazed to see a critically endangered wedgefish leading a group of fish swimming just 200 metres from shore.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Wildlife videographer\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/jakemasondiving\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jake Mason<\/a>, founder of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/returntotheocean.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Return To The Ocean<\/a>, was flying his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/marine-animals\/leatherback-turtles-filmed-in-australia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">drone<\/a>\u00a0in Shark Bay, Western Australia, when he came across the unlikely entourage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The wedgefish was spotted just off the coast of Western Australia. Credit: Jake Mason <\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt first, I didn\u2019t know what I was looking at,\u201d he says in a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/C4xa1K9Pp8c\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram<\/a>\u00a0post sharing the footage. \u201cIt was a ball of something moving along.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As he looked closer, he started to make out different types of fish within the group. &#8220;I noticed it was a school of juvenile golden trevally, several cobia, and possibly a sharksucker or two,\u201d he says. Sharksucker is another name for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/marine-animals\/nurse-shark-remora-maldives\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">suckerfish<\/a>, or remora.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Golden trevally, cobia and possibly a sharksucker can be seen swimming alongside the wedgefish. Credit: Jake Mason <\/p>\n<p>To top it all off, they were all following the lead of a very special \u2013 and incredibly rare \u2013 creature. \u201cThe highlight is the giant critically endangered\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.iucnredlist.org\/species\/39394\/121035795\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">whitespotted wedgefish<\/a>\u00a0leading the pack,\u201d says Mason.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mason flew his drone over the curious collection of creatures for around 10 minutes until he had to leave. At each turn, the fish followed the leader \u201cmove for move\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is quite possibly the coolest thing I\u2019ve seen while flying my drone in search of wildlife,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The critically endangered\u00a0whitespotted wedgefish is a species of\u00a0fish\u00a0in the\u00a0Rhinidae\u00a0family. Credit: Jake Mason<\/p>\n<p>Image and video credit: Jake Mason @jakemasondiving and Return to the Ocean @returntotheocean.com<\/p>\n<p>More amazing wildlife stories from around the world<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A videographer in Western Australia was amazed to see a critically endangered wedgefish leading a group of fish&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-21094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}