Search icon

Sport

22nd Aug 2014

Video: Kayaker comes perilously close to getting high-fived in the face by a giant humpback whale

Holy sh*t. Holy sh*t. HOLY SH*T!

Eoghan Doherty

Holy sh*t. Holy sh*t. HOLY SH*T!

This is a little bit too up close and personal for our liking and it’s pretty safe to say that everyone here at JOE HQ just kayaked their pants after watching this clip. While we freshen up though, make sure you check out the video below which was recently uploaded by YouTuber Cimeron Morrissey.

In it, while out kayaking in Monterey Bay, she managed to capture the magnificent moment a giant beast from the deep breached relatively close to her. “That’s all well and good” you might think, “what a fantastic opportunity to see nature in its element” you’ll say to yourself when, quite literally out of the blue, another whale pops up and practically slaps her face off with its giant fin.

Cimeron writes about her experience, “while kayaking in Monterey Bay and watching a huge raft of sea lions that had come up right in front of us, a bus-sized humpback whale suddenly rose up out of the water only 10 feet from my boat. He was making a b-line toward me. Humpbacks are graceful and fully aware of their size and of their surroundings, so I wasn’t scared (at first) but I was certainly shocked that he chose to swim right up to me.”

“He dove under my kayak, which was amazing and exhilarating! But then his back arched and came to the surface about 3 inches from my boat, which freaked me out a bit. I wondered: hmmm, maybe this one needs contact lenses? Then his enormous barnacle-encrusted tail came out of the water and was about 12 inches from my face, which pretty much made my eyes pop out of my head. So pardon my swearing in the video – I was rather stunned!”

Rather stunned!? That’s just a bit of an understatement. Jaysus Chrisht, our nerves…

YouTube via Cimeron Morrissey. Main image via YouTube clip.

Topics:

whale