Watch: Whale tosses snorkeler out of the water; 'it was a bit scary'
A guide leading a group of snorkelers off the Gold Coast of Australia was suddenly thrust into the air by a humpback whale.
Max Persyn and Jacqueline Payne were among the clients of a “swim with whales” excursion by Aqua Adventures off Southport last week.
The video Persyn and Payne captured several snorkelers clinging to a rope attached to the boat with whales surfacing close by.
“We think the rope we were hanging onto touched the whale’s tale and just like we would flick away an unfamiliar touch, so did the whale, there just happened to be a human above him!” Max and Jacqueline wrote on their YouTube post, explaining what the tour guide relayed to them.
Persyn told the Daily Mail Australia, “We heard the commotion and saw our guide was in the air on top of the whale’s tail.”
Staff from Aqua Adventures immediately called for the snorkelers to return to the boat, Yahoo Australia reported.
Fortunately, the guide who was tossed into the air was unharmed.
“The whales had been swimming around us constantly for about 20 minutes coming closer and closer,” Payne told Daily Mail Australia. “We didn’t expect them to get that close, but they were the most curious whales, our guide mentioned it’s quite rare for them to be so curious.
“It was a bit scary because we didn’t know at the time why it happened. From what I could tell, everyone just had a lot of adrenaline and shock at what happened.
“It was exciting once we realized everyone was safe and that it wasn’t an act of aggression.”
A staff member from Aqua Adventures said of the incident, according to Yahoo Australia, “For whales to be that interested in us and to come that close to us, obviously very close in the end, but most of the time they were just coming to a point where they were just a few meters away from us…visibility was bad and they would need to come close, they really did.
“That was one of the best whale experiences you could ever get, you guys [the clients] are incredibly lucky…It was a pretty amazing trip.”