A Comox Valley woman is still beaming after a rare close encounter with a pod of dolphins.

Arriana Gibson is a wildlife photographer and more accustomed to photographing bears in their natural habitat but Tuesday she was on a local beach as 40 to 50 white-sided dolphins spent a few hours dashing around just offshore. 

It happened near a breakwater along the Royston waterfront south of Courtenay and what’s known as the “Royston Wrecks”, a collection of sunken ships.

The pod of white-sided dolphins was putting on a show just 10 to 30 metres offshore.

“I was just in awe of being able to witness something like that for an extended period of time, it was so amazing,” Gibson told CHEK News.

Gibson grew up in Alberta and had only dreamed of seeing in person what she’d only seen on National Geographic-type programs. 

Watch the full story in the video below:

Then on Tuesday afternoon, word about the dolphins went out on a local wildlife sighting Facebook page and they were still there two hours later when she arrived.

“And then I started taking a few photos of their movements, it was very like rythmic and you could tell very intentional. And they would swim in a circular pattern and then they would cut through the middle and then they would go back to being in a circular pattern for hearding fish and then they would dive down very fast,” she added.

There were 40 to 50 dolphins and amoung them, at least two babies.

A bit of research on site with another viewer revealed the pod was probably feeding and teaching the young ones what to do.

“It was just incredible to see and yeah likely the training was taking place because of the presence of the younger ones,” Gibson said.

And then a particularly special moment with one of the baby dolphins.

“I find with the red that I wear, sometimes with animals that can see colour it really catches their attention and so when I climbed down on the rocks to be able to get at their eye level the baby saw my hat and was super interested so he jumped out of the water and he was trying to look at me with his eye,” Gibson said. 

She says the entire experience lasted about four hours. 

“But like what an absolutely incredible evening and what a gift it is to live where I do where I can see this kind of stuff,” Gibson could be heard saying in one of the videos.

She said you could hear the sound of them exhaling from their blow holes and occasionally you could even hear the clicks or vocalizations they use to communicate. 

You can view more of her “Arriana Outside” wildlife photographs here.