In an experience they won’t soon forget, two East Coast striper fishermen were nearly pancaked by a humpback whale. A nearby boater captured video footage of the close call, which took place Tuesday off the coast of New Hampshire. The viral clip shows the massive whale breaching and landing on top of the boat, which sends the two fishermen flying overboard.
Luckily, some Good Samaritans who were nearby came to their rescue, and they say neither angler was injured. They were also able to recover their capsized boat with the help of the U.S. Coast Guard and a local towboat service. As for the giant humpback, it’s still alive and well and feasting on baitfish near the mouth of the Pisquataqua River.
“We watched it afterwards and it kept breaching like it was before,” Capt. Mike Genestreti tells Outdoor Life. “We’ve seen it since then, and I actually spotted it this morning outside of Wentworth.”
A Maine-based fishing guide and the owner of MAG Charters, Genestreti was one of the boaters who helped pull the two fishermen out of the ocean after the whale capsized their boat, the Parker. (He was joined by two young anglers, one of whom recorded the video on his phone.) There were four or five other boats in the area fishing for striped bass, and although you can’t see Genestreti’s boat in the video, he was just 20 to 30 yards away from the Parker when the whale landed on top of it.
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“It was like a car crash. Just crazy violent and really loud,” he recalls. “I saw the boat get rocked, watched one guy fly off, and then I saw the [boat] capsize, which was really scary.”
Genestreti, who’s lived on the Pisquataqua all his life, says the one-in-a-million encounter was an honest accident. He explains that a huge bunker run had shown up at the mouth of the tidal river a week earlier. This brought an influx of big stripers inshore, along with the humpback whale. He says the whale was following the school of baitfish at the same time that local striper fishermen were chasing the feed.
“All those bunker had literally brought the humpback into the river, so he was scaring people up and down the mouth. Everybody knew he was there.”
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Genestreti says he doesn’t think the two fishermen who got tossed were being irresponsible. And he’s been surprised by the negative comments the video has received from people who say the anglers were disrespecting the whale and intruding on its feeding grounds. He does admit, however, that they could have backed off the bait ball and given the whale a bit more space. NOAA recommends staying at least 100 yards from whales, with additional requirements for more sensitive species like right whales.
“When those bunker pods get balled up so tight, the whale is feeding from underneath, and he can’t look up and see through the pod. So, when I’m out there, especially with my clients, we’re always staying on the fringes of the school. We’re close to the bunker feed but we’re not on it,” he says. “It was certainly wrong place, wrong time … but I think it was also just not being aware of their surroundings. They had striper fever. They were focused on the fish.”
The same could be said for the whale.
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