The first time I ever went on a whale-watching expedition, I was amazed by how close the boats were able to get us to the feeding humpbacks. I had bought tickets for the trip expecting to see a few spouts and fins through a pair of binoculars, but no, they got right up close to the giant, breaching animals. I felt whale snot sprayed on my face.
Yet it’s good to remember that the large, whale-watching boats of the tourist trade are piloted by professionals who know exactly how to mange these experiences safely. For the private person, especially on a smaller boat, it does not pay to be in the path of a feeding whale, as these boaters recently discovered off the coast of New Hampshire.
Yesterday, a pair of boaters found themselves in literally deep water after a breaching whale toppled their boat and dumped them both into the ocean. Incredibly, this footage was captured by two teenagers who were on a similarly tiny craft only a few yards away. The video is pretty incredible—as is the fact that no one was injured after this shocking incident.
Related: Whale Feeding in the Water Nearly Swallows Kayaker in Harrowing Video
In the clip, you can see a breaching whale tip over a nearby boat, dumping two passengers into the water in Portsmouth Harbor.
An Accidental Collision
For Colin and Wyatt Yager, a simple fishing trip turned into a rescue mission after the nearby boat capsized. They said one man managed to jump overboard as the whale collided with the craft but that the other man was pushed under the boat as it came down.
Thankfully, no one was seriously injured.
One of the fishermen from the boat, Ryland Kenney, said that they had seen the whale feeding and were attempting to keep their distance, but apparently hadn’t gone far enough away.
“He went under, he disappeared for a few minutes, and then the next thing we know, he just popped right up on our transom,” he told a local news station.
Though the Coast Guard reported the incident to the appropriate wildlife authorities, it is not thought that the whale itself was injured by this collision. In fact, it’s possible that the giant creature never even noticed that the boat was there.
“If you look at the video really carefully, you can see that the whale has its mouth open,” Sara Morris of the University of New Hampshire Shoals Marine Laboratory told the press. “It looks like it’s lunge feeding and actually trying to catch fish.”
Yes, You Can Be Swallowed By a Whale
Though orcas attacking yachts have been much in the news lately, this incident appears to be entirely accidental, and it’s not the first of its kind, either. Many whales swim with their mouths opening when filter feeding or trying to catch fish, as this whale was doing. A pair of kayakers in California were capsized by a feeding humpback in 2020, and a diver in Cape Cod found himself actually inside the mouth of a filter feeding humpback in 2021 (he, too, survived to tell the tale).
From the whale’s perspective, these incidents are the equivalent of stepping on an anthill or swallowing a fly. They don’t mean to do it, but it can cause quite the commotion when they do.
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