In Laguna, Brazil, this amazing alliance is increasing fishermen’s catches while benefiting cetaceans.
In the competition with wild animals, man most often takes the advantage. But it is indeed a case of collaboration favorable to the two species that describes a study published Monday, January 30 in the “Reports of the American Academy of Sciences” (PNAS). In 2018 and 2019, an international team of scientists studied a traditional artisanal fishery practiced in the small coastal town of Laguna, in southern Brazil. For more than a hundred years, men have formed an astonishing alliance with the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatum gephyreus) for fishing for mullets, small silvery fish that are a source of income for local families and prey for cetaceans.
“Bottlenose dolphins tend to push schools of fish towards the coast, and it was difficult to know if they directly benefited from this century-old collaboration with humans”remarks Christophe Guinet, CNRS ecologist and marine biologist at the Center for…
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