A massive pod of dolphins put on a stunning display for whale watchers off the Newport Beach coast this week, creating a scene that looked almost unreal.
The extraordinary moment was captured on Wednesday afternoon by Newport Coastal adventure.
More than 100 bottlenose dolphins were spotted swimming and leaping together near a tour boat.
Instead of a few dolphins playing here and there, the animals appeared to be jumping in groups, putting on a rare, coordinated show for onlookers.
Bottlenose dolphins can be more than 10 feet long and more than 1,000 pounds, according to wildlife experts, yet they still launch high out of the ocean in acrobatic leaps.
This extraordinary sighting unfolded just off the Newport beach shoreline and delighted passengers who pulled up alongside the pod.
According to Jessica Rodriguez, a representative for Davey’s Locker and Newport Landing Whale Watching. She shared that “what happens with the bottlenose dolphin is, when we spot them, we’ll cruise up next to them. We’ll be about 300 feet within the pod, and they usually turn and come right over to us. They love to play in the wake.”
She further added, “It’s just like surfers riding a wake of a wave, and when we get the boat going up really high speed, it makes a lot of waves in the back, and they ride along in these waves like a surfer. They have a lot of fun.”
Bottlenose dolphins are found in temperate and tropical waters around the world.
They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, including harbor, bays, gulfs, and estuaries, as well as nearshore coastal waters, deeper waters over the continental shelf and even far shore in the open ocean.
In the U.S., bottlenose dolphins are found along the West Coast off California, Oregon, and Washington; in the Hawaiian Islands; along the east Coast from Massachusetts to Florida; through the Gulf of America, and in the Caribbean.