Palm Coast, Florida, photographer Mark Bias (marksphoto.com) captured these amazing photos from a helicopter flying over the north jetty near the mouth of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville earlier this month. “They were playing with the school of redfish by taking them in their mouths and swimming a short distance and releasing them,” he says.
The dolphin never actually ate any of the fish while he hovered near them. Dolphins regularly pursue and eat redfish after pushing them into the shallows to strand them on shorelines. Given the fact that young dolphins seem to be present here, this might be an example of behavioral teaching.
Bias also photographed a large school of what he believed to be red drum about 200 yards offshore of Jacksonville.