whale
A couple out for a quiet day of salmon fishing off southwestern Vancouver Island took a very brief and harrowing ride atop a gray whale.
Reports of a hot chinook bite brought Joe and Shirley Antonelli, of Port Alberni, British Columbia, out into outer Barkley Sound in their new Double Eagle boat. As shown in this video (warning: contains some understandably strong language), while trolling at midmorning, the boat seems to hit something. Moments later, a gray whale surfaces — directly under their boat. Amazingly, the boat tilts but is not capsized.
I can’t imagine a gray whale with malevolent intent; typically, the gentle giants pay little attention to boats in their midst. Maybe proof of that is this incident, which no doubt for these anglers was a classic case of wrong place, wrong time.
You can read a more complete report here.
