In what is believed to be a world-first, a Western Australian dolphin research centre has captured footage of wild dolphins stealing from crab fishermen.
A conservation film team, who have been working on a wildlife documentary about wild bottlenose dolphins for the past two years, have spotted the aquatic mammals learning how to outsmart the fishermen and steal their bait.
The group of dolphins, including their calves, learned the behaviour by observing fishermen and how they fish for blue swimmer crabs in the local Leschenault Estuary System and Koombana Bay.
The dolphins used their eyesight, echolocation and teeth to remove bait from pots, nets and boxes.
"Some appear to work like locksmiths opening closed bait boxes," the Dolphin Discovery Centre Bunbury said.
A spokesperson for the Dolphin Discovery Centre Bunbury said dolphins are incredibly smart animals, but that the footage is "surprising".
"The persistence of some of them and how we believe they learned this behaviour was fascinating but also brought up even more questions from researchers after seeing this footage."
While the video may seem sweet and endearing, the spokesperson said the dolphins stealing from the traps is considered dangerous and unhealthy.
"The main danger is getting entangled in the fishing gear. But also foraging for food humans put into the water is unhealthy and begging dolphins is not what we need or want as they also got increased risk of boat strikes, etc.
"The bait food is also obviously an issue. Most people use chicken, spleen and similar, some use fresh fish. But we don’t want dolphins to forage for unhealthy food."
Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, which were captured in the footage, typically eat anywhere between 5-8kg of fish in the summer and double that in the winter. They mainly eat local and migrating fish but are known to eat octopus and other seafloor dwelling animals like soft crustaceans.
"Dolphins forage to whatever is available all the way up to Australian salmon and tuna, which is too big to swallow so they break it down into pieces," the spokesperson said.
There was also the risk of the crab fishers getting angry at the dolphins.
The research centre said it is excited to be able to document the marine mammals, with international researchers calling for more research to be carried out into this "unique" behaviour.
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