Terrifying moment whale capsizes boat sending two people onboard into the water
Lucy Devine
Featured Image Credit: CBS Boston/Colin Yager
This is the terrifying moment a whale capsized a boat before sending two people on board hurtling into the water.
The incident occurred off the coast of New Hampshire and was caught on camera by two teenagers on a nearby boat.
In the footage, the whale can be seen crashing down on the vessel, sending the terrified fishermen flying into the water.
Seconds later, the boat capsizes, but luckily, both fishermen survived the incident.
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Speaking to CBS News Boston, one of the fishermen, Ryland Kenney, said: "Thankfully it was slow enough that I could kind of swim away from it before it completely capsized.
"He just happened to come up, he had a mouth full of fish coming in and just crashed down on the back of the boat."
Meanwhile, fellow fisherman Greg Paquette added: "Not much time to react, I took a few steps back, which is why I basically did a superman off the back of the boat.
"... This is their home, this is their ocean."
Ryland desperately searched for Greg but couldn't see him. However, the pair made it home safely after two teenagers - Colin and Wyatt Yager - came to the rescue to help the men.
"I was just in shock. Everyone else had the same reaction and tried to get over to those people," Wyatt told USA Today.
"It was like, 'Oh shoot,' and then, 'We’ve got to go help these people.' All the boats dropped what they were doing to go over to help them."
The humpback whale is believed to be around two-years-old. It's not clear what caused the whale to capsize the boat, but it's believed to have been feeding on fish just below the vessel.
Dianna Schulte, co-founder and director of research for the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation believes that the incident was 'an accident'.
She told The Post: “The whales will come up through schools of fish with their mouth wide open and close their mouth, either right before they break the surface or even after they break the surface.
“The boat was in the wrong place.”
She continued: “The boaters that are in the video, they should have known better to not be fishing with a large whale in the area, because [an accident] can happen.
“The whales, when they’re feeding on the fish schools, when they’re that dense, they just can’t see through the fish school, so they don’t know what’s above them, especially on a cloudy day like today. So the whale had no idea that the boat was even there.
“I’ve been watching whales and researching whales for 30 years, and I’ve never seen a humpback whale purposely hit a boat.”