A man was riding the waves in Howe Sound recently when he noticed more than 100 dolphins following him.
Jerry McArthur and his friend Sheldon rode from Porteau Cove Provincial Park to Horseshoe Bay on Feb. 24 to film for his company.
The Pemberton man, who invented the Hydroflyer, was excited about a storm and big waves but when they arrived the water was flat.
"We were pretty disappointed and we thought, 'Hey, we'll just go out in the water anyways,'" he told Glacier Media.
The Hydroflyer is a cross between a jet ski and an electric foil (e-foil) surfboard, propelled by a 7.5-horsepower motor. A submerged wing mounted to the craft's bottom allows it to rise more than three feet into the air as it approaches a top speed of 50 km/h.
"The easiest way to think of it is like an underwater airplane wing, basically," said McArthur.
He was a couple hundred feet from the coastline in Howe Sound near Porteau Cove when something in the water caught his attention.
"As we were kind of going out, we saw something out in the water. We didn't really know what it was," he said.
To his surprise, they were foiling right in a big pod of dolphins.
"I didn't want to get too close to them, so we steered away from them to kind of give them a wide berth, but they're curious, so they came over to check us out," he said. "The next thing I know is just dolphins everywhere."
The entire encounter was captured on video via his 360-degree camera on a pole off the front of the Hydroflyer.
The Hydroflyer had him about three feet above the waves so he had an exceptional view looking down.
"When I looked down, all I could see was dolphins underneath me," said McArthur. "It was really wild because they were actually turning upside down underneath me so they could stare up at me."
At first, he remembers being concerned about hitting them and tried to move out their way.
"I was just like 'holy crap' the whole time. I was just blown away."
The dolphins rode with him for about 20 minutes. McArthur said he’s never had an experience like this.
"I've never had them swim underneath me like that either. They were probably like a foot below me," he said.
Anna Hall, a marine zoologist from Vancouver Island, confirmed the animals are Pacific white-sided dolphins.
"That looks like a pretty big group. Big groups are more common in the Strait of Georgia, north of Nanaimo," said Hall, adding the dolphins would have been very interested in McArthur. "They are known to bow ride and are really fast. A bit of an unusual sighting for Howe Sound."
Hall called it a lucky encounter, "but not one people should try for."
McArthur grew up along B.C.'s coast and doesn't recall seeing the number of animals he witnessed this week.
"Now, we seem to see killer whales and porpoises and stuff quite often, so it's cool they've come back," he said.
