World Courant
An Alaska man on a paddleboard escaped an in depth encounter with a humpback whale, not even getting moist throughout a tense few seconds caught on digicam by family and friends as the large creature surfaced proper in entrance of him then glided below his board.
“It’s simply so large. You’re puny in opposition to this whale,” Kevin Williams of Anchorage mentioned Thursday, every week after his journey with an grownup humpback whale in Prince William Sound. Grownup females can weigh as much as 70,000 kilos and common about 49 ft in size, in accordance with the Alaska Division of Fish and Recreation. Males are slightly smaller.
Williams mentioned anybody who claims they would not be afraid in that scenario is loopy.
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“If in case you have a whale that doesn’t know you have been there and is that shut, that’s not scenario,” he mentioned. One flick of the animal’s fin “or something it does could possibly be the tip of my life.”
Williams, his son Brian and a pair different pals have been paddleboarding or kayaking within the sound simply off Whittier, positioned about 60 miles southeast of Anchorage.
They’d seen the whale within the fjord, which is about 2 miles huge. Williams mentioned he was slower than his pals, who have been about 200 ft forward of him.
A whale approaches Kevin Williams whereas he was paddleboarding in Prince William Sound close to Whittier, Alaska, on July 13, 2023. (Brian Williams)
The whale started to method his pals, however they have been near the shoreline so he figured the whale would run out of room and reverse course. He thought he was within the most secure spot since he was trailing the group.
The whale went underwater for about 45 seconds, longer than he had observed it dive earlier than.
“And it surfaced proper in entrance of me, coming in the direction of me,” Williams mentioned. “Whoa! I like to see whales up shut, however I am on a paddleboard.”
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Because the whale slipped under the water once more and turned on its facet, he may see the white of its stomach slowly gliding beneath, about 3 ft below the floor.
The whale’s pectoral fin was sticking just a few ft out of the water, and Williams feared the creature may flip over because it swam under him, or he may topple off the board and land on its abdomen.
“If I fell down, you already know, my ft may have simply been on that whale — tickling that whale or no matter,” he mentioned.
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To regular himself in case the fin hit, he braced his knees collectively, kneeled, then lowered himself on all fours.
Because the whale handed below him “there was hardly any turbulence, and I didn’t get moist,” he mentioned, including that it’s uncommon for folks to get harm by whales.
Nonetheless, the expertise received’t preserve Williams off the water. He plans one other paddleboarding journey later Thursday.
“I’ll by no means cease, and that is as soon as in a lifetime,” he mentioned.
Alaska paddleboarder narrowly escapes collision with humpback whale
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