A snorkeler and amateur wildlife photographer kept his video camera rolling after a pod of whales passed and it’s a good thing he did.
After a pod of humpback whales swam by their boat, a group of snorkelers were told they could enter the water with instructions not to swim aggressively toward the whales. They were instantly treated to the underwater sounds of the whales, and moments later, a whole lot more.
First, they watched as a mother whale and its calf swam by. Then, another whale passed underneath. They thought the show was over, so amateur wildlife photographer Patrick Davis and his fiancé Baylee, along with the others, started swimming toward the boat.
But Davis kept his video camera rolling, and it’s a good thing he did. Out of nowhere, a huge humpback whale rocketed into the air in front of Davis, who captured it in video. He was only feet away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re0zojSt08I
The encounter on the snorkeling trip to the Kerama Islands off Okinawa, Japan, occurred last month but was posted on ViralHog on Tuesday. This snippet of video doesn’t clearly show the mother and calf or feature the underwater sounds. But a longer version from Seawildearth does. That one tells the story of the encounter in its YouTube video with the narrator saying Davis “was about to get a front row seat of a lifetime.”
And he most certainly did.
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Since Davis is on active duty in the military, wildlife cameraman Mark Thorpe handled the licensing of the video with ViralHog.
“I wasn’t in the water, but Patrick’s account was that it happened so fast—one second the whale wasn’t there and the next it was all he could see filling his view,” Thorpe told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors.
“As you can see, he was filming wide angle, which means the object would appear at greater distance than reality. Patrick said he could feel the pressure wave of displaced water in the water column as the whale breached, so it must have been relatively close.
“Given the focal length of the fixed lens he was using, I’d suggest the closest body part of the animal was probably around 10-feet away when it breached.
“On the emotional front, all Patrick could say was that all he felt was euphoria. There was no time for fear as he couldn’t see it coming. The adrenalin rush was real in his own words.”
Photo courtesy of ViralHog and Patrick Davis.
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