A group of students made an incredible find off the coast of the Azores when they dropped a camera into the water for a look at the marine life.
According to the BBC's Discover Wildlife, undergraduate students from the University of Exeter in England headed to the Azores on a field trip and dropped a baited remote underwater video camera — or BRUV — into the waters around the north Atlantic archipelago.
With the help of the camera, they saw some truly incredible things. First, there was a school of Atlantic spotted dolphins.
"We could hear their clicks and whistles first before they appeared on camera in pretty large numbers," Phil Doherty, a marine conservation lecturer at the university, told Discover Wildlife. The pod played and swam in front of the camera before departing. Then, the students got the thrill of a lifetime.
A blue shark appeared, investigating the bait and scratching itself against the camera equipment.
While neither blue sharks nor Atlantic spotted dolphins are particularly rare, seeing them illustrates the incredible biodiversity of the Azores and surrounding waters. The archipelago's unique placement in the North Atlantic Ocean makes it perfect for observing a lot of ocean life.
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"The Azores is situated in incredibly deep water but has a high density of seamounts that create biodiversity hotspots, attracting large, migratory species," Doherty said. On top of that, multiple oceanic currents merge there, enabling a wide variety of wildlife to congregate.
The students' encounter highlights the immense benefits that wildlife cameras and trail cameras can provide casual naturalists and researchers. From beavers in England to tigers in China and grizzly bears in Montana, cameras like the one used in this case can give researchers the ability to gain insights into creatures that would be difficult or even impossible to observe otherwise.
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