SOUTHPORT, Australia (Nine News) – Some snorkelers got a little too up close and personal with a group of whales off the Australian coast, and one of them was launched into the air by a whale’s tail as seen in video.
YouTubers Max Persyn and Jacqueline Payne were snorkeling with humpback whales in waters off Australia’s Gold Coast when they captured a moment of mayhem.
“We were super excited. Obviously, the opportunity to swim with whales is pretty rare,” Payne said.
Surrounded by three whales, the couple were keeping an eye on one animal beneath them when the unbelievable happened.
“All of a sudden, there was commotion behind us. We turned around, and someone – we didn’t know at the time who it was – but someone was up on top of the tail of a whale,” Payne said.
That someone was one of their tour guides, lifted from the water by a leviathan of the deep. In video, Payne called the incident “the most insane thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
“Everyone was just in such, like, adrenaline, I think. You had this adrenaline rushing through your body,” Payne said.
The tour guide escaped uninjured after taking flight.
“It was the first time this happened to him, but he was very ecstatic about it,” Persyn said.
“It was a relatively gentle experience from what we could tell,” Payne said.
It’s a whale of a tale for the man who was thrown into the air and the couple who caught the whole thing on camera.
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