MELBOURNE, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- A surfer in Western Australia (WA) was left shocked when he was hit by a dolphin while trying to catch a wave.
Jed Gradisen, WA's under-14 state surfing champion, was surfing off the coast of Kalbarri, 570 km north of Perth, when the leaping dolphin struck him.
Footage of the incident, posted online by Gradisen's father, shows the bottlenose dolphin swimming up behind him and launching itself into the air at the perfect angle to come down on top of the 13-year-old.
"I saw them coming. I was like "oh my god, they're coming straight for me' so I like tried to get out of the way and he just jumped straight into me," Gradisen told Fairfax Media in comments published on Monday.
"It dove out of the water and I jumped off my board to try and get out of the way.
"The dolphin landed on my, sort of, shoulder and the back half of my body. The dolphin reacted, really I think, really shocked, almost as shocked as I was.
"It's nose went straight through my board, it must have hurt a bit. It was rustling around and really didn't know what to do."
The damage to the board done by the dolphin was offset by the fact that Gradisen had snapped his board moments earlier and was heading back to shore when the dolphin struck.
Despite common bottlenose dolphin weighing between 150 and 650 kg, Gradisen escaped the incident without serious injury and views the series of events as an unlucky mishap.
"In my dreams I wouldn't dream about anything like that. I think it was an accident. It was just as amazed as I was," he said.
Expert opinions are split on why dolphins leap out of the water with most believing they either do it to save energy or just for fun.
