Boat caught in middle of dolphin stampede
It was a rare, breathtaking sight: In a flash, a pod of about 1,000 common dolphins began a stampede, churning across the blue-gray waters off Dana Point at a rapid pace.
Dave Anderson, the captain of Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari, said that in the decades he's spent on the water and out among Southern California's dense dolphin population, it's a phenomenon he's encountered only rarely.
Yet last weekend, it happened again ... and it happened twice: once on Saturday afternoon and again on Sunday morning. Boat hands captured Sunday's stampede on video.
"It's one of those things you can hope for it, but you can't plan for it," he said.
"It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of beautiful and interesting things" on the water.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/01/hundreds-of-dolphins-stampede-off-dana-point.html
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What an awesome experience that must've been! Our zodiac was surrounded by a pod of only around 24 dolphins while we were whalewatching between Maui & Lanai several years ago, and I will never forget it. Cetaceans are magical.
That was sooooo cool! What a treat to have seen that!
And no matter how much video you take or still pictures or anything, you just can't share that experience.
I feel so very fortunate, as I am sure you do.
All I could do was sit there and go..WOW!! If I had a camera, I probably would have forgotten to pick it up.
I hope someday to be able to have such an experience! 
The closest I've come to that is when I was staying at a hotel on the banks of Lake Chicot, Arkansas, and was awakened to the sound of tens of thousands of ducks flying low above the waters of the lake. My only regret is that I did not have a video camera to record the spectacle.
I know dolphins being extremel agile and whatnot, however in a pod of that size; it seems dangerous to the safety of the dolphins to purposely navigate a boat that close to this......
Maybe not. 
