Off Lady Elliot Island in Australia's southern Great Barrier Reef, a wild bottlenose dolphin has found an unusual way to eat. Instead of hunting fish on his own, he chases them until they vomit, then eats what comes up. This behavior was recorded by researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast who published their findings on September 13, 2026, in the journal Ecology and Evolution. Bubbles, a dolphin spotted in waters around the island since 2017, has a notched dorsal fin and a scar on his right side, which can be used to identify him. The discovery came from the university’s long-term ecological monitoring project, Leaf to Reef, around Lady Elliot Island, supported by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Reef Islands Initiative.
How Bubbles turns another fish’s meal into his own
