Fishermen capture dolphin pod playing 'jellyfish football' off Gwynedd coast

• Video credit: David Holt / BPM Media 

Two fishermen were treated to a game of "jellyfish football" in "amazing" long encounter with a pod of dolphins.

David Holt and Jim Ozanne were on a boat off the coast at Llanbedr in Gwynedd on Wednesday when four bottlenose dolphins swan up to the vessel.

David said the dolphins spent around half an hour in the vicinity of the boat circling, "bow riding", and playing with a large barrel jellyfish in what he described as "dolphin football".

He explained that they've had brief encounters with dolphins off the coast before but never for this period of time.

"Having studied a good weather forecast the previous night, me and my fishing partner Jim Ozanne decided to head out from Borth y Gest to Sarn Badrig Reef (St Patrick's Causeway) off Llanbedr in Cardigan Bay for some late season fishing." David said.

"On arrival, we were approached almost immediately by a pod of four bottlenose dolphins who were extremely inquisitive as to what we were doing.

"They spent the best part of 30 minutes circling, 'bow riding', playing and flipping large barrel jellyfish out of the water in what we can only describe as 'dolphin football' this can be evidenced in the latter part of the video clip."

He added: "It is becoming increasingly popular to have brief encounters with either bottlenose or Risso's dolphins during the summer months but never to the extent we saw.

"As we were the only traffic on the water with none of the usual powerboats or jet skis we see all season, we think this is probably the reason why.

"It is amazing the things that are so close by but we very rarely get to see."

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