{"id":339360,"date":"2025-12-12T01:10:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T01:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/339360\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T01:10:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T01:10:12","slug":"killer-whales-and-dolphins-may-be-helping-each-other-hunt-off-b-c-coast-new-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/339360\/","title":{"rendered":"Killer whales and dolphins may be helping each other hunt off B.C. coast: new report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have found evidence that two unlikely collaborators \u2014 killer whales and dolphins \u2014 may be helping each other find and feast on salmon off the coast of British Columbia.<\/p>\n

Sarah Fortune, an assistant professor in oceanography at Halifax\u2019s Dalhousie University said it would appear the massive fish-eating whales may be working with Pacific white-sided dolphins, which have been spotted eating the salmon chunks the killer whales produce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She is a co-author of a paper published Thursday in Scientific Reports that found the two species appear to be working together while they forage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recordings picked up \u201cthis audible crunch as the whale bites down, then you see these fragments of fish that are released,\u201d and then dolphins swim in to eat the pieces, Fortune said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could interpret that maybe the dolphins are pesky freeloaders, just trying to get a free lunch,\u201d she said in a recent interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But co-author and drone operator, Keith Holmes with the Hakai Institute, noticed that the killer whales were \u201corienting\u201d themselves to where the dolphins were.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then we look at the underwater footage, we see that when the killer whales are starting their foraging dives, they\u2019re actually following the dolphins\u2026 so when the dolphins start diving, the killer whales start diving,\u201d Fortune said.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Orcas caught \u2018stalking\u2019 sea birds in Puget Sound; scientists say it\u2019s not hunting, it\u2019s practice<\/a><\/p>\n

This population of killer whales is after one thing to eat: Chinook salmon, Fortune said, whereas these dolphins are \u201cgeneralist\u201d predators who will eat what they find.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chinook salmon are far too big for these dolphins to capture and swallow whole, and the whales are leaving them with manageable pieces.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to make sure that the dolphins weren\u2019t being a pest and that the killer whales weren\u2019t disturbed by their presence,\u201d Fortune said.<\/p>\n

The research was based on aerial and underwater video footage. The researchers used electronic tags equipped with video, acoustic and inertial sensors to capture some of the footage.<\/p>\n

A review of drone footage didn\u2019t reveal any clear examples of antagonistic behaviour \u2014 which could have looked like the whales charging at the dolphins or biting at their flippers.<\/p>\n

In fact, scientists observed that killer whales were uninterrupted when they would occasionally share salmon halves with whales in their family line by dropping it for another whale to grab.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not have instances of the dolphins going and trying to intercept that fish or steal that part of the fish,\u201d Fortune said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dolphins appeared to sit back and wait for the crumbs to come their way.<\/p>\n

Instead of taking opportunities to rob the killer whales, Fortune said dolphins appeared to be exerting extra time and energy by guiding killer whales on these foraging dives.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think it is interesting that the dolphins presumably can recognize that these resident fish-eating killer whales don\u2019t present a threat to them and perhaps present an opportunity to access a high quality prey, \u201d Fortune said.<\/p>\n

\"\"A pod of northern resident killer whales travelling together is shown in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Handout \u2013 University of British Columbia (A.Trites), Dalhousie University (S. Fortune), Hakai Institute (K. Holmes), Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (X. Cheng) <\/p>\n

Fortune, who is also the Canadian Wildfire Federation\u2019s chair of large whale conservation, said there are many questions about how and if this relationship is benefiting either species.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like to do future studies where we can figure out whether killer whales are better hunters when dolphins are helping them out,\u201d and to see if certain family lines of this resident whale are more likely to co-operate with dolphins, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAre those killer whales in better body condition or have improved reproductive success compared to matrilines that don\u2019t co-operatively forage with dolphins? These are kind of the future considerations and bigger questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 11, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have found evidence that two unlikely collaborators \u2014 killer whales and dolphins \u2014 may be helping each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-339360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}