It's easy to forget just how large whales are until you see one yourself, up close and personal. Last week near Plymouth, Massachusetts, the folks on this fishing boat got a view that was perhaps too close. In an incident that happened in the White Horse Beach area, a large whale leaps out of the water and lands right on the bow of the boat. The whale immediately slides off the front of the boat and back beneath the waves.
While the incident is over in seconds, it was still captured by multiple cameras from different angles. If you listen closely, you can hear bystanders in other boats reacting to the unexpected collision. As far as we know, the whale was not injured in this accident. Still, we'd love to be a fly on the wall and listen in when the owner of this boat went to make an insurance claim for the damages!
Frankly, we're surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often when people start to crowd these large animals. There were simply too many tourist boats in the area at the time, and a collision like this was probably inevitable at some point.
The Town of Plymouth posted photos of the damaged boat on their Facebook page, and it appears to show a heavily bent rail and a blown out glass or plastic hatch that looks to have received the full force of the whale's bulk.
According to the social media post, the craft the whale landed on was 19 feet in length, which just goes to show how large the whale in the video was in cmoparison. The page confirmed that a harbormaster boat was in the area at the time this happened. The boat checked on the occupants and found no injuries to the people onboard., nor did the whale's leap damage the boat to the point that it wasn't seaworthy. They reported that the incident is still being investigated by Massachusetts Environmental Police.
Meanwhile, Plymouth is using the incident as a safety reminder for whale watchers who may be coming to the area for some late summer whale watching.
"The Plymouth Harbormaster Department recommends a distance of at least 100 yards to minimize potential interactions with whales," the post reads. "This interaction, while rare, is a reminder that these interactions can be dangerous for both boaters and whales."
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