Jerry Mcarthur is a BC -based entrepreneur who has dedicated his career to explore the ocean.
A recent meeting at Howe Sound, north of Vancouver, reminds him of why.
Mcarthur was in his electric hydrophoil, an ocean glider driven by the propeller he designed and sells, when he was suddenly surrounded by dolphins.
Fortunately, I was filming the experience using a 360 degree camera.
“This is crazy,” he shouted when dozens of marine mammals began to swim next to him, some jumping from water. “I don’t want to hit one of them.”
The Dolphins coincided with the speed, they pounced below and emerged next to him for an encounter that, according to him, lasted almost 20 minutes.
He said he and his friend saw animals in the distance at the beginning and tried to avoid them, but the dolphins had other ideas.
“They wanted to play, I guess,” he said.
A recently receded species to BC
The dolphins are Dolphins of the Pacific White-Ide, also known as hook marsopas, which, according to the non-profit conservation group, Oceana, are “a truly acrobatic species of dolphins that it loves to show.”
“They are frequently seen riding the arches and awake of the ships, and even jumps, turns, turns and spectacular mortal jumps at high speeds.”
They tend to live in the temperate waters of the North Pacific, from the coast of northern California to Alaska.
The animals had greatly disappeared from the coast of British Columbia in the early 2000s, according to the Pacific Whale Watch Association, but have begun to reappear in the last decade in Pods of up to 200, although in other places, it is known that they swim in thousands of schools.
Mcarthur said that while he meets a lot of marine life, he has never experienced anything as he did this week.
“Everything I could see were dolphins … there were probably around 100”.
Mcarthur said that the meeting is also a good example of why he designed the device on which he was riding, marketed as a hydroflyer, which began to create in his basement and is now sold in 18 countries.
“It’s like the sea mountain bike,” he said.
As he explained during an appearance in 2021 in Dragon’s Den, he wanted to create a quieter way to move through the ocean than what he offered a traditional personal boat that operates with gas, making strong noises and leaving stations that could scare marine life, such as pods of curious dolphins.
“I was in the cloud nine,” he said.
Jerry and Wendy Mcarthur de Pemberton, BC, present their electric hydrophoil jetski.
