It was a moment of terror for one New Hampshire fisherman. Rather than encounter a shark, it was a breaching whale that triggered panic. The animal ended up sinking his boat in a shocking encounter.
Ryland Kenney revealed he was forced to jump into the water to avoid the whale. Fortunately, a group of teens helped rescue the fisherman. One of the teens, Colin Yager, also shared his side of the incident. For the fisherman, he said he was trying to get off the vessel as quickly as possible.
"I was in fight or flight mode, so just trying to get off the boat as quickly as possible because I know it was going under once I heard the whale crunch the engine," Kenney said on Friday. "So I just kind of jumped sideways, horizontally to get away from everything. When I hit the water... I was in kind of temperature shock because about 55 degrees, so it was really hard for me to catch my breath."
"I couldn't locate my friend Greg," he continued. "He was actually underneath the boat at the time, and it felt like hours, but it was about maybe five seconds. I finally found him, so once we reunited, I felt a little more calm."
Whale Terrifes Fisherman
The incident was captured on film. Yager and his brother Wyatt saw the incident with the whale and rushed over to help. "It was just completely insane. I was just looking in the right direction, luckily, and I saw the whole thing happen, and I had my camera out, all ready to record whatever I saw, because I just wanted to record stuff," Yager said. "I saw it start to go up, so I just pressed the record button and... the rest is on video."
Ironically, Kenney said he actually spotted the whale a few days before.
"I've actually taken pictures of the whale breaching, days before, and I had actually had a dinner with my family, and my family was asking me when I was showing them photos of the whale, 'Aren't you scared of the whale potentially knocking your... boat in the water?' And I and I kind of said, 'Oh, well, I've done a lot of research, and the probability of that happening is like lightning strikes,'" he said. "And of course lightning strikes the next day."
