B.C. man’s childhood friendship with dolphin inspires career [Video]

You hear them before you see them. But before that, Gary Sutton says, you smell them.

“They stink,” Gary laughs after focusing his camera on dozens of sea lions lounging around the marina. “They stink, but I do love them.”

But sea lions can’t compare to his true love.

“At the end of the day, they are on the menu for my favourite species, killer whales,” Gary smiles.

But before he saw orcas in B.C. as an adult, Gary was befriended by a dolphin in Florida as a boy.

“I still remember being completely awestruck,” Gary says.

Young Gary was sitting beside the ocean on vacation when a dolphin swam up to him and started making sounds.

“I didn’t really know what to do as I sat there with it,” Gary says.

The dolphin seemed to be just as curious about him as he was about it.

“Then I started walking along the sea wall and (the dolphin) would follow me down and do barrel rolls.”

And …