Two kayakers were paddling off the coast of Hawaii when they experienced an uncomfortably close encounter with a whale and its calf.
One of the kayakers, Brittany Ziegler, recently moved from California to Maui in Hawaii, where she films whales during their winter migration to the Pacific Islands.
“I spend every single day on the kayak getting to know all the new babies”, Zieger told Daily Mail Online.
Even for an experienced whale photographer and enthusiast, this up-close-and-personal greeting was a little overwhelming. “I’m really scared right now,” said Ziegler in the video, as the whales moved undersurface just meters away.
“It’s a brand new baby and it’s still bigger than a car,” said Ziegler in the video. “They’re really intelligent. And they’re obviously just as curious about us as we are with them.”
The footage shows Ziegler shrieking with excitement as the humpback repeatedly breaches close to her kayak. “Oh my God, it’s right under us!”
Whale watching regulations require boaters/kayakers to keep minimum 200 meters away from killer whales and 100 meters away from all other whales at all times. Responsible paddlers endeavor to follow these rules, and rare exceptional encounters do not represent a typical paddling experience.
