A screenshot from a video taken by a person on a nearby boat shows a whale just as it is about to crash down on another boat off the coast of Portsmouth, N.H., on Tuesday.
Colin Yager/TMX/AP
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Colin Yager/TMX/AP
Two people were thrown overboard by a whale while boating off the coast of New Hampshire on Tuesday, the Coast Guard said.
Video of the incident shows the whale breaching, or shooting out of the water, and landing on the boat, capsizing it.
A breaching whale landed on and capsized a boat Tuesday in Portsmouth Harbor, New Hampshire. Everyone, including the whale, were unharmed. pic.twitter.com/fmo7ckzTAS
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 23, 2024
A mayday call was issued, and others were able to rescue the boaters, the Coast Guard said.
“We are grateful to the good Samaritans for taking such quick action to rescue these two individuals. Bravo Zulu!” the Coast Guard wrote on social media platform X.
The Coast Guard said the two boaters were uninjured and their boat salvaged. They said the whale appeared to be uninjured.
Greg Paquette was one of the men thrown off the boat.
“All of this is happening, from the whale hitting the boat, to us being in the water, is four seconds. But if seemed like it was a lot longer,” he told Good Morning America Wednesday.
Teenage brothers, Wyatt and Colin Yager, were in a nearby boat. They captured the breaching whale on video and helped rescue Paquette and Ryland Kenney, the other man thrown overboard.
“It was a second of, ‘Oh man, what just happened?’ It was a complete shock,” Wyatt Yager said on Good Morning America. “And then, immediately, just drop everything and go get those guys out of the water.”
