Tim Earling was paddling for a wave Monday morning when he was humbled by the sight of a large dolphin leaping into the air just a few feet behind him.
The accompanying footage, captured off Redondo Beach in Los Angeles County, shows Earling and friend Jason Owen stop paddling when they realize the wave had been claimed by a far superior athlete.
“It was not my first encounter with them, but I’m always shocked when I see them up close,” Earling, 51, told For The Win Outdoors. “I always look twice to make sure it’s not a shark.”
Earling wrote on Facebook that the dolphin nearly landed on top of him. Owen, who was close by, told the Daily Breeze that the close encounter left both surfers in shock.
“We just kind of froze for a while,” Owen said.
Bottlenose dolphins, which can measure 10 feet and weigh nearly 1,000 pounds, are known to frequent surfing lineups and even to catch waves.
Scenes like the one involving Earling and Owen are not too uncommon, but they occur so randomly that it’s difficult to catch them on video.
Earling explained that Owen had set up a robotic beach camera that tracked his movements via a band he wore on his arm.
“That was the only jump that day, but we had a group of 10-plus dolphins hanging around pretty close to us,” Earling said. “One of them swam right in front of me in about seven feet of water.”
Earling’s reference to sharks was based on recent sightings of great white sharks farther north off Manhattan Beach.
–Images courtesy of Jason Owen
