This was a whale of a scary tale.
An Alaska man paddleboarding on July 13 in Passage Canal nearly was knocked off his board by a humpback whale.
Kevin Williams, of Anchorage, told the Anchorage Daily News that he and his son, Brian Williams, had seen the huge creature from a distance.
Then the whale dived.
“It went under for quite a long time,” Kevin Williams told the newspaper on Wednesday. “And then all of a sudden it surfaces right in front of me. And it’s coming towards me sort of like a submarine.”
My dad was knocked off his paddle board by a whale today. 😅🐋 pic.twitter.com/qgOxQheqpt
— Erik Williams (@erikfromalaska) July 14, 2023
His son was farther away and snapped a photograph. He said he noticed that the whale was directly under his father’s board.
Kevin Williams told the Daily News he was terrified.
But then there was a big splash and the whale was gone in a flash, Williams told the newspaper. The whale’s fin had missed his board by inches. His other son, Erik Williams, posted a photo of the incident on Twitter.
“I dream about seeing whales up close. But not this close,” said Anchorage resident Kevin Williams, who was nearly knocked off his paddleboard last week in an encounter with a humpback whale. https://t.co/TPC2Hj8xXY
— Anchorage Daily News (@adndotcom) July 20, 2023
Federal regulations forbid boaters or paddlers to intentionally be closer than 100 yards from a humpback whale off the Alaska shores. In Kevin Williams’ case, he thought he was at a safe distance until the whale emerged from the water.
“We can’t always predict where (the whales) are going to come up,” Suzie Teerlink, a Juneau-based marine mammal specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Daily News. “And sometimes we might predict wrong, or they change direction. And we’ll have a close encounter.”
Kevin Williams said he was glad his son took photographs because “I don’t think anyone would believe me.”
“It was a scary encounter. It was not a comfortable experience,” he told the newspaper. “I dream about seeing whales up close. But not this close. Not while on a paddleboard.”