Henry Irizawa regularly commutes via BC Ferries from his Comox home to Vancouver for work. He’s done the trek nearly 400 times in the past 10 years. But he’s never seen anything like what he saw Tuesday morning.
“I was on my way to Vancouver to do a hockey game,” said the Sportsnet television director. “We were about 45 minutes out of Horseshoe Bay. The captain comes onto the PA and says ‘hey folks, there’s about 200 dolphins straight ahead of us.’ So I raced up to the top deck, right to the bow, and I couldn’t believe it. The people around me were just… they couldn’t even talk.”
Irizawa said he has seen an orca in the distance on one of his crosses, but never anything like this.
“Even the excitement in the captain’s voice, you just had to go see it.”
Irizawa has seen a lot of live performances in his 50-year sports directing career, including covering numerous Olympic Games. Where does this rank?
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“This was something else. Nature at its best. To see them… They were so close. They were just having so much fun out there. It was incredible. It lasted no more than two minutes, and they were gone.”
Irizawa posted his video to Facebook and it quickly went viral, with more than 80,000 views in the first 24 hours.
“I can’t believe the number of views. I’m getting calls from all over.”
