VIDEO: Blue whale capsizes boat

ByLA Blake WPVI logo
Monday, July 7, 2014

You probably can't imagine anything much scarier than this: the largest animal ever known to have lived on Earth opening its mouth just a few feet away from your boat. It's the mother of all fish tales, and Dale Frink and Cici Sayer get to tell it.

Frink, a wildlife photographer, took to the ocean with Sayer, his captain, where the pair discovered some blue whales, which have been known to be as long as 100 feet. The boat was a safe distance from the whales, Frink said. When the animals went back underwater, Sayer turned off the boat's engine to wait until they resurfaced, which is what you're supposed to do.

That's when the trip took a turn for the terrifying. Two of the whales resurfaced right behind the small boat, and the impact flipped it completely over. Frink had two GoPros mounted on the boat. Though the video he managed to salvage was facing away from the whales, it captures how shocking that moment must have been.

Frink shared the photo he says he took instinctively with San Diego's ABC 10. He and the captain were soon rescued, and fortunately no one was hurt (including, Frink believes from watching from the rescue boat, the whales).

Frink wrote about the incident on his website, calling his incredible survival tale "an accident, the one in a million risk that you take when going into the deep ocean on a small boat."