Two men were forced overboard when a whale landed on their boat.
Ryland Kenney and his friend Greg Paquette were fishing off the coast the New Hampshire when something unthinkable happened, The Washington Post reported. Amazingly it was caught on video.
A whale breached the surface and landed right on their 23-foot boat, sending the pair into the water.
The whale was a juvenile humpback that Kenny had seen earlier and had shown his mother photos of on Monday, telling her not to worry. The fishermen tried to stay away - at least 50 feet from the humpback - but it wasn’t enough.
“All I heard was “Whoa!” Paquette told WFXT. “After that I turned around and the whale’s head was coming down on top of the engine and I just felt the weight,”
Kenney said the whale jumped after some prey with its “mouth wide open. And as he came down, his mouth closed and basically you could hear a crunch. And he had crunched the engine,” the Post reported.
In both an amazing and frightening moment caught on camera, a massive whale breached the ocean’s surface off the coast of New Hampshire and crashed down on a boat, causing it to capsize.https://t.co/rUO5syb2lR pic.twitter.com/TS8suYT9wa
— Boston 25 News (@boston25) July 24, 2024
Colin Yager was fishing nearby.
“It came up way out of the water and it was going for those pogies and it knocked some out of the air. You can see it in that video. I saw it and heard it land on the boat and it was shocking,” Yager told WFXT.
The water came rushing in and the boat rolled. Kenney jumped but Paquette was thrown into the water, which was about 55 degrees.
The Coast Guard said a good Samaritan rescued Kenney and Paquette and neither was hurt. The good Samaritan was 16-year-old Yager and his brother, WFXT reported.
The occupants were ejected from the vessel as the boat capsized. Sector issued an urgent marine information broadcast (UMIB); they directed Coast Guard Station Portsmouth Harbor to launch.
— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) July 23, 2024
A good samaritan recovered both individuals from the water. No injuries were reported.
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