Close encounters of the paddle-boarding kind starring whales, sharks, dolphins and rays

In our previous paddle-boarding post we documented several spellbinding orca encounters from around the world. This time we feature a mix of marine meet ups presented in descending order of creature size.

Esperance, Western Australia is best known as home to the Cyclops wave of surf-film fame. Purported to be the world’s heaviest wave, Cyclops unloads massive amounts of water on a shallow reef. But out beyond the reef, where the ocean is as placid as a pool, a paddle boarder may fortuitously happen upon whales en transit.

For many, sharks are the ebony-eyed stuff of nautical nightmares, but for these calm paddle boarders in Huntington Beach, California, they are objects of admiration. The juvenile great white sharks in the above video were filmed with a GoPro camera in June of this year.

Paddle boarder Rich German captured this footage of an adorable pod consisting of 6 bottlenose dolphins just off the coast of Laguna Beach, California. Watch as a baby dolphin swims playfully across the bow of German’s Jimi Hendrix-imprinted board.

Rays are the avians of the ocean, which makes paddle boarding above them akin to a low-altitude version of flying a glider over a gaggle of geese. The five stars of this video are cownose rays, which feed upon clams, oysters, hard clams and other invertebrates.