Whale Soars Into Air, Lands on Boat Off New Hampshire Coast
Two men were subsequently recovered by other boaters and brought to Great Bay Marina.
In a dramatic incident off the New Hampshire coast, a humpback whale launched itself out of the sea and landed on a fishing boat, tossing its two occupants into the ocean on Tuesday morning.
“We didn’t see him for a couple of minutes, and then the next thing we knew, he popped up and landed right on the transom of the boat,” one of the boat’s passengers, Gregg Paquette of Groveland, who was with Ryland Kenney of Dover, New Hampshire, told WCVB.
“I just looked up and just kind of saw the boat tipping, and I said, ‘The only way to avoid this is to just kind of jump horizontally away,'” Mr. Kenney said.
Wyatt Yager, 19, and his brother Colin, 16, from Maine, were fishing about one mile off the coast, targeting pogies. Colin spotted the whale and began recording, capturing Wyatt in the foreground. “I saw it go up so I was just lucky enough to be facing the right direction,” Colin told the station.
“I saw it come up, and I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s going to hit the boat,’ and then it kind of started to flip,” added Wyatt. “When I turned, the whale’s head was already landing on the engine,” Paquette described. “I look down, the boat is pitching up, the transom is going down into the water.”
“Everything seemed like in slow motion. It was really weird,” Mr. Kenney said. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh, it was eight seconds. How’d you move so fast?’ But it was almost slow motion, like a movie.”
The video shows the whale breaching, sending fish flying out of the water. The massive animal then flops onto the rear of the nearby fishing boat with Paquette and Kenney aboard.
One man jumped overboard while the other was thrown as the boat rolled. The Yager brothers helped pull them out of the water. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
“Truly grateful to them,” Mr. Paquette said. “They were making the video, dropped everything, zoomed right over and plucked us out.”
The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed receiving a mayday call after the whale caused the 23-foot center console boat to capsize. The men were subsequently recovered by other boaters and brought to Great Bay Marina.
