In New Hampshire this past Tuesday, a humpback whale threw two fishermen into the cold Atlantic Ocean by landing on their boat.
The stunning footage shows the huge animal breaching from just behind the tiny boat, which was moored half a mile out in Portsmouth.
The video shows the two fishermen, not wearing life jackets, catapulted into the sea after their boat capsized.
The US Coast Guard said a fishing boat nearby rescued the four fishermen.
Thankfully, no one was injured, even the whale.
Marine mammal experts said that it was not caused by an unhappy humpback, but a nearly tragic mistake of nature at its weirdest.
Dianna Schulte, co-founder and director of research with the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, has also come out to say that it was not done intentionally.
Schulte said the whales will “lunge” toward bait balls, opening and closing their mouths either just beneath or at (and even after) the surface. The boat was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
The juvenile humpback could have been lured to the coast by a dolphin, shark feeding fish, or perhaps was practicing its hunting skills in the shallow water.
“The boaters that are in the video, they should have known better to not be fishing with a large whale in the area, because [an accident] can happen,” Schultz said.
Schulte also shrugged off speculation the whale was either “pissed off” or acting maliciously.
“The whales, when they’re feeding on the fish schools, when they’re that dense, they just can’t see through the fish school, so they don’t know what’s above them, especially on a cloudy day like today. So the whale had no idea that the boat was even there,” said Schultz.
“I’ve been watching whales and researching whales for 30 years, and I’ve never seen a humpback whale purposely hit a boat.”
Schulte urged that as long the humpback stays in Portsmouth’s shallow waters, fishermen should be at least 100 yards from the area, particularly during mealtime.
