The Dolphins of Shark Bay (2010)

Puck is the leader of a family of bottlenose dolphins known to researchers as The Beaches because of their unusual habit of catching fish by driving them through shallows to the shore. She is heavily pregnant with her eighth calf, Samu , but the baby is late and the seas are starting to fill up with hundreds of sharks, ever-ready to feast on newborns. Swimming with Puck as she waits for Samu's birth, are her surviving daughters and grand-daughters and a five-year-old son, India, who ought to have sought independence by now but seems reluctant to leave the family circle. Change and hazards lie ahead and with the use of the latest in miniature HD cameras, and underwater listening devices, this film grants viewers unprecedented insight into how dolphins live, including the earliest hours of Samu's life, how older sisters help to guard the baby against sharks and scenes which suggest: . dolphin mothers 'sing' to their unborn babies . unrelated females gather to greet newborns . family members give life-skills lessons to the very young. As the story unfolds, audiences also discover the hazards of living shark-filled waters; find out about what happens to Puck's son when he first leaves the group, and witness the unusual variety of hunting techniques developed by Shark Bay's dolphins, including the first known example of tool use by a marine mammal. Additional revelations are provided by Professor Janet Mann, of Georgetown University, USA, who has been studying the dolphins of Shark Bay for more than 20 years. In that time, Janet Mann has collated the life stories of around 1,500 individuals, learned to recognise many on sight and revolutionised what it known about dolphin life, including discovering the dolphin tool-users - a family which fixes sponges to their snouts to hunt close to the sea-bed.