A pod of dolphins was spotted catching some serious air last week off the coast of San Diego, with footage of the aquatic aerobics already racking up millions of views on social media.
The high-flying Bottlenose Dolphins were spotted on Aug. 12 and filmed by Erica Sackrison of Gone Whale Watching.
«You could just see them jumping like, 20 feet in the air, and everybody on the boat just started pointing and I’m like, what is everybody looking at?» Sackrison told local news station KFMB. «Almost feels like they were doing Olympic-style jumps, like they were just all trying to be like Simone Biles and just touch the sky and come down. It was awesome.»
Watch dolphins perform ‘Olympic-style’ jumps
The video, which shows the marine mammals skimming over the water and bursting out of the water high into the air, has already been viewed more than 8 million times.
Gone Whale Watching founder Dominic Biagini told KFMB that it may have been abundant food sources drawing the ebullient dolphins to the area.
«Anchovies are really, really popular food source, especially for the common dolphins. But we’ve also been seeing bottlenose dolphins in bigger numbers, and the bottlenose dolphins are the ones that you see in those spectacular videos, leaping into the air. And often times when we see bottlenose dolphins here in numbers like that, it’s because there’s a lot of squid in San Diego waters. So most likely, we have an influx of squid right now,» Biagini told KFMB.
Max Hauptman is a Trending Reporter for USA TODAY. He can be reached at MHauptman@gannett.com
