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Normally, these northern residents search for salmon on their own, while Pacific white-sided dolphins target much smaller fish and squid. <\/p>\n
The new observations suggest both species gain something from teaming up, although scientists are still measuring how much each truly benefits.<\/p>\n
Whales and dolphins collaborate<\/p>\n
The researchers deployed biologgers<\/a>, small tags that record an animal\u2019s depth, movement, and sound, on nine whales and flew camera-equipped drones overhead.<\/p>\n Tag and drone footage showed whales repeatedly turning their bodies toward dolphins, with 25 clear course changes followed by shared foraging dives.<\/p>\n During dives, killer whales lined up behind dolphin paths while tracking their echolocation<\/a>, high-frequency clicks used to sense prey at depth.<\/p>\n Different skills, shared hunt<\/p>\n Northern resident killer whales are apex predators that focus on adult Chinook salmon about 3 feet long and 30 pounds.<\/p>\n Pacific white-sided dolphins are generalist feeders<\/a>, animals that eat several kinds of prey, often small fish and squid under two feet long.<\/p>\n Killer whales grip and tear salmon into pieces for relatives, whereas dolphins swallow smaller food whole and eat leftover bits from broken fish.<\/p>\n \u201cOur footage shows that killer whales and dolphins may actually be cooperating to find and share prey-something never before documented in this population,\u201d said study lead author Dr. Sarah Fortune, Canadian Wildlife Federation Chair at Dalhousie University<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dolphins help whales find fish<\/p>\n Both species rely on echolocation clicks, and resident killer whale clicks peak between 12 and 19 kilohertz, according to one acoustic analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the new dataset, killer whales often shortened or silenced click trains when dolphins were nearby, while dolphins kept long bursts of buzzes.<\/p>\n Toothed whales send out sound in a tight, cone-shaped beam straight ahead, like a flashlight. <\/p>\n By turning their bodies as they swim, they can sweep that narrow beam across a wider area, helping them search for prey more effectively.<\/p>\n When dolphins joined hunts, tagged killer whales rolled their bodies less during deep chases, suggesting they depended more on dolphin scanning.<\/p>\n Cooperation, not theft<\/p>\n Biologists considered kleptoparasitism<\/a>, a feeding strategy where one animal steals food from another that hunted, but the footage did not match.<\/p>\n Killer whales never lunged at, chased, or tail-slapped the dolphins, and researchers saw no abrupt retreats or evasive maneuvers from either species.<\/p>\n Dolphins made repeated dives to at least 200 feet while producing rapid buzzes and click trains linked with active hunting, indicating real effort. <\/p>\n That combination of tolerance, synchronized movements, and shared access to food fits better with cooperation.<\/p>\n Dolphins stay safer near whales<\/p>\n The dolphins also live alongside mammal-eating ecotypes<\/a>, killer whale populations that specialize on seals, porpoises, and other marine mammals instead of fish.<\/p>\n Past field studies show these mammal-eaters often avoid the fish-eating residents, so dolphins clustering near residents may gain a moving safe zone.<\/p>\n This work did not capture many encounters with mammal-eating whales, so the anti-predator idea remains speculative rather than a demonstrated driver.<\/p>\n Researchers have suggested that dolphins might learn which whale calls signal danger versus safety, yet that cultural learning hypothesis still lacks direct tests.<\/p>\n Pacific white-sided dolphins move quickly in large groups and expend a lot of energy, making dense clusters of calorie-rich fish especially valuable.<\/p>\n By shadowing salmon specialists, dolphins can sometimes add pieces of large Chinook<\/a> to diets otherwise built around smaller schooling fish.<\/p>\n In one event, dolphins scavenged bits from a Chinook that a killer whale carried to the surface, tore apart, and shared with relatives.<\/p>\n Salmon scraps may be modest in quantity, yet occasional high-energy bites could help dolphins when smaller fish are patchy or scarce.<\/p>\n Following the underwater action<\/p>\n The biologging tags used in this project were suction-cup devices that recorded three-dimensional motion, underwater video, and sound from each tagged whale.<\/p>\n Drone footage added a top-down view of groups, letting scientists track how dolphins and killer whales aligned positions and dives over minutes.<\/p>\n By matching video frames, acceleration spikes, and crunching sounds from salmon kills, researchers tied dolphin positions to when whales captured and shared prey.<\/p>\n The same toolkit is helping scientists examine interspecific interactions<\/a> \u2013 repeated encounters between species that might reveal cooperation or competition under changing ocean conditions.<\/p>\n Why this partnership matters<\/p>\n For fish-eating killer whales, partnering with dolphins could reduce searching effort for Chinook while still providing the large, fatty salmon their bodies require.<\/p>\n Efficiency may matter because many Chinook runs along the Pacific coast are depressed, and the whales depend heavily on them year-round.<\/p>\n The partnership also hints at social learning, since cooperative tactics such as these are often passed within whale families rather than hard-wired genetically.<\/p>\n Future work will track whales and dolphins<\/a> across seasons to learn how often they hunt together and whether other populations use this strategy.<\/p>\n The study is published in Scientific Reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Off Vancouver Island in British Columbia, scientists have recorded killer whales and dolphins hunting salmon together in coordinated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1147,79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-366101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cooperative](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/dolphins_killer-whales_foraging-salmon_images_SciReports_1s.webp.webp\")
<\/a>Cooperative foraging between dolphins and fish-eating killer whales. Video frame grabs, acoustic detections, and dive depths of killer whale I145 over a ~40 min period while Pacific white-sided dolphins were present. (B) Acoustic detections of dolphins (top) and killer whale I145 (bottom). Credit: Scientific Reports. Click image to enlarge.<\/p>\n