The dolphin was headed directly for Jed Gradisen and his board, luckily the teen rolled out of the way just in time.
The dolphin was headed directly for Jed Gradisen and his board, luckily the teen rolled out of the way just in time.
A young surfer had a lucky escape when a dolphin leapt from the water and embedded its nose into his board as he caught a wave.
Jed Gradisen, 13, was surfing near the Western Australia town of Kalbarri when the dolphin torpedoed from the top of the wave straight into him.
"I saw [the dolphins] coming and I thought 'oh my God they're coming straight for me'," he said.
"So I tried to get out of the way and it jumped straight into me, he just dove out of the water and I jumped off my board and tried to get out of the way.
"It jumped a long way so I had a couple of seconds to react."
Jed, who has been surfing since he was 3 and has won numerous junior competitions, said the dolphin landed on his shoulder and the back half of his body.
"It was really shocked, almost as shocked as I was. His nose went straight through the board, that must have hurt a bit," he said.
Jed walked away relatively unharmed, but his board was the second one lost that day, having just snapped another in half on the previous wave.
Jed, who is sponsored by surf label O'Neill and had been competing in a surfing contest in Geraldton the day before the dolphin encounter, was sore for the next few days but was otherwise uninjured.
His father, Andrew, was filming Jed's brother, Ben, the state under-16 surfing champion, ride a wave when the dolphin launched on to the youngster.
The Gracetown father said it was incredible Jed wasn't badly injured.
"A pod of about 10 or 12 dolphins had been jumping. I thought it would be cool to get a dolphin jumping out of the wave with Ben or Jed riding it," Gradisen said.
