Marine biologists who study cetaceans and fans of aquatic mammals in general know that Costa Rica is blessed with an incredible abundance of these creatures. As a result, scientists, photographers and filmmakers often visit our coasts. This time, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) went undercover and underwater with Spy Tuna, a robotic camera device that captures unprecedented footage of massive dolphin gatherings in Costa Rica.

Dolphins – Spy in the Pod is the name of a nature documentary series that made its debut in late December 2013. The spy in question is a robotic camera disguised as a member of the genus Thunnus, a tuna fish. This is not the first time that a film production crew working for the BBC has used this spy drone; they have used squid and turtle-looking cameras to capture the amazing ritual of young dolphins passing around a puffer fish and essentially getting high from the toxins.

A dolphin megapod is a sight to behold. For the Spy in the Pod series, thousands of spinner dolphins and their incredible social behaviors were captured by Spy Tuna. Spinner dolphins are quite common in the Pacific waters of Costa Rica, where fishermen know that megapods congregate for the purpose of feeding, mating, playing, and communicating. Dolphins do not suspect Spy Tuna since real tuna fish frequently choose to swim alongside dolphin pods since they provide protection from sharks. For this purpose, clever fishermen in Costa Rica sometimes use an illegal wooden decoy that simulates a dolphin and lures tuna near their boats and lines.

Dolphins and sharks tend to have an uneasy relationship. As apex predators, some sharks will seek to feed on a single dolphin without thinking about the potential coordinated attacks from other pod members. Sharks do not generally venture into a pod, but a hungry shark blindly going after tuna near a pod might end up getting attacked. In the past, the United States Navy has succeeded in training dolphins to attack sharks, but these aquatic mammals are smart enough to know that bull sharks should be left alone.