Snorkeler in Australia Gets ‘Launched’ Out of Ocean by Humpback Whale in Wild Video

There are some things that you've got to see to believe, and this video that 10 News First Australia shared on Monday, September 2nd is one of them. A tour guide leading a snorkeling excursion on the Gold Coast got a ride to remember from a humpback whale, and it was all captured on other snorklers' cameras.

The video is relatively short and begins with the snorklers already in the water when a trio of humpback whales approaches them. The tour guide is then spotted being launched out of the air by one of the whales, causing deck crew aboard the boat to quickly call everybody back onto the boat, cutting their snorkeling adventure short.

10 News First said in the caption that the humpback whale was 15-meters, or nearly 50 feet long! The tour guide will also have quite the 'tail' to tell, they said. Talk about a once in a lifetime experience! Commenters had a lot to say about the encounter. @Al admitted, "This would cause me to have a heart attack immediately." @Christina agreed and added, "My literal worst nightmare." And I laughed when @Maximus said, "I hope they tipped the tour guide after the tour was over!"

Related: Diver’s Game of ‘Hide and Seek’ With Humpback Whale Is Giving People Anxiety

More About the Whale Encounter

Commenter @berty said, "Thought there was a certain distance you had to be from whales and dolphins." It turns out in this instance the whales were approaching the snorkelers, not the other way around. Max Persyn and Jacqueline Payne were snorkeling on a 'swim with the whales' excursion hosted by Aqua Adventures. They posted the original video to YouTube, and explained what they thought might've happened, "We think the rope we were hanging onto touched the whale’s tail and just like we would flick away an unfamiliar touch, so did the whale, there just happened to be a human above him!”

Payne spoke with several news outlets and told Daily Mail Australia, “The whales had been swimming around us constantly for about 20 minutes coming closer and closer. We didn’t expect them to get that close, but they were the most curious whales, our guide mentioned it’s quite rare for them to be so curious."

Yahoo Australia spoke with a staff member from Aqua Adventures who was just as surprised as the guests were by the encounter, “For whales to be that interested in us and to come that close to us, obviously very close in the end, but most of the time they were just coming to a point where they were just a few meters away from us…visibility was bad and they would need to come close, they really did," they also said, "That was one of the best whale experiences you could ever get, you guys [the clients] are incredibly lucky…It was a pretty amazing trip.”

Fortunately, the tour guide was uninjured, and no other snorkelers were injured during the event. I don't think anybody who was there will ever be able to top that swimming with whales experience!

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