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SQUAMISH, B.C. — A British Columbia entrepreneur experienced a once-in-a-lifetime wildlife encounter this week when a pod of dolphins chased him down while he was shooting a video on his personal watercraft.
Jerry McArthur, founder and CEO of The HydroFlyer, designs and sells the electric surfboards that hover above the water and was on one in Howe Sound, north of Vancouver, with a friend on Monday when he noticed dolphins near by.
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McArthur says he decided to give the dolphins “a wide berth” to avoid contact, but the animals noticed him and swam over.
The B.C. man says the HydroFlyer — essentially a personal hydrofoil — rises about a metre above the water when moving, and it allowed him to see about 20 dolphins swimming and jumping around him.
The entire encounter, which McArthur captured on video, lasted about 20 minutes.
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There has been a number of close encounters between humans and sea mammals in recent months in B.C., including one case in December of a sea otter following surfers around and clambering onto a surfboard despite people’s attempts to avoid contact.
Another incident in December saw a sea lion lumber onto Highway 4 from nearby Kennedy Lake on Vancouver Island, disrupting traffic until it was herded back to the water.
For McArthur, the experience remains surreal even days later.
“All I could see underneath me were dolphins,” he says. “They were actually turning upside down so they (could) stare up at me and see what’s going on.
“I kind of thought … maybe I should be worried about one of them hitting me, because they were jumping up beside me and all this stuff. But after a little while, I realized just how skilled and agile they are in the water. So, I kind of just went back to doing my own thing, and they just played and danced around me the whole time.”
McArthur had designed the HydroFlyer as an alternative to other personal watercraft to create less disturbance on surrounding marine life, and joked that the encounter proves his product’s value proposition.
“They definitely seemed to like the foil,” he says. “We’re always trying to do press and get the word out there in the company, and we’ve done lots of different things. But this one really seems to resonate with people.”
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