A Clever New Fishing Method, 'Conching,' is the Latest Trend
Spreading Among Australia's Hippest Bottlenose Dolphins That's
Some Seriously Sick Conching, Bro "Conching," a means of fishing
using conch shells as traps, is the newest craze among Western
Australia's Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins. Murdoch University
Attention hipsters and other people seeking hipness: there's a
new fad catching on in Western Australia's Shark Bay, and you
won't want to be the last to to post pictures of yourself
imitating it to your Tumblr feed. "Conching" is a method by
which Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins are trapping small fish
in conch shells, bringing the shells to the surface, and then
shaking them with their rostrums to clear out the water and dump
the fish into their mouths. More remarkably, the trend appears
to be spreading throughout an entire population of dolphins, and
fast. The first isolated instances of conching were recorded in
2007 and 2009 among a small group of Shark Bay's dolphins. But
other dolphins seem