Humpback Whale Body Slams Boat With Passengers on Board

Does the whale have a grudge?

Thar She Blows!

In a scene straight out of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, a humpback whale breached the waters off New England and body slammed a small fishing boat into capsizing, USA Today reports, tossing two hapless fishermen overboard.

Two teenagers on another boat, who caught dramatic footage of the Tuesday morning incident, rescued the two, who didn't have reported injuries.

This whale of a tale unfolded near the mouth of the Piscataqua River, which forms the boundary between Maine and New Hampshire.

In recent weeks, visitors to the area have seen whales frolicking and hunting for fish, but no whale has capsized a boat in those waters since at least the mid-1990s, according to USA Today.

 

Hump Day

The video footage seems to show typical humpback whale behavior, Boston City Cruises naturalist Linnea Mayfield told USA Today.

Whales blow bubbles into the water below a school of fish and the bubbles act like a net, capturing and stunning the fish. Then they swim below the bubbles and then breach the surface with their mouths open, engulfing their wriggling prey.

As the theory goes, whales were chasing after fish, and it just so happened that fishermen on the boat were probably competing for the same school.

Also, Mayfield added humpback whales have blind spots like an automobile, so the incident was likely an unfortunate accident.

"[V]ery possible the vessel was in the animal’s blind spot as it came up to lunge and feed," she said.

The whale incident in New Hampshire recalled the numerous, well-publicized incidents of orcas attacking and sinking boats.

But unlike this humpback whale, the orcas clearly targeted those vessels, experts have said.

More on whales: Footage Shows Whales Fighting Off Orcas Using Explosive Diarrhea