A large whale smashed a fishing boat Tuesday morning just off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sending two people into the drink. It is just the latest volley in the war between marine mammals and human boats.
Two teen brothers out for an early morning fishing trip caught the whole thing on video and came to the rescue of the survivors, according to WCVB:
Wyatt Yager, 19, of Maine, said he and his brother Colin, 16, were fishing about one mile off the New Hampshire coast because they were looking for pogies. Colin spotted the whale and began recording, with his video showing Wyatt in the foreground.
The video shows the whale breaching, propelling fish out of the water. As the massive animal’s mouth closes, it flops over onto the rear of the nearby fishing boat with two men aboard.
One of the men jumped and the other was thrown overboard as their boat rolled, and the Yager brothers said they helped pull them out of the water. The brothers say no one appeared to be seriously injured.
This is, of course, not the first time we’ve seen marine mammal-on-vessel violence. Killer Whales have managed to take down hundreds of boats just for the lolz in the Strait of Gibraltar since 2023. But this encounter is a much, much rarer event.
Whales usually keep their distance from Portsmouth harbor, but humpback whales have been spotted closer to land than ever before. Just the day before the fishing boat incident, a humpback whale was spotted near the mouth of the Piscataqua River, WGME reports.
I’m no marine biologist, but this looks like a humpback whale—a creature that can grow up to 60 feet long and weight 36.3 metric tons. This isn’t some Orca hopped up on its mediterranean holiday—It’s a leviathan from the cold dark depths. Of course it’s going to wreck your shit, but they almost never make the attempt.