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'That was heavy': Breaching whale lands on kayakers.

Two kayakers got more than they bargained for while whale watching off the California coast.

  • By Story Hinckley Staff

Two kayakers got their money’s worth of a whale-watching tour outside of Moss Landing, Calif., early this week when a breaching humpback whale landed on top of them.

But the couple hardly seem fazed. One of the kayakers called it “the most extraordinary thing to happen to me,” according to Inside Edition.

“We were taken under water by the whale, perhaps in the down-draft. I think it brushed against me while I was out of the kayak ... Neither of us know how we weren’t ended there and then,” he added.

The episode was filmed by Sanctuary Cruises passenger Larry Plants.

“Humpbacks were coming up next to and in the middle of many kayakers. It was amusing. It’s all fun and games until someone gets jumped on,” Sanctuary Cruises wrote underneath a YouTube video on September 13. “The next thing we knew, this thing launched right on top of these two kayakers. That was heavy.”

“They came very close to getting crushed to death by the mighty humpback whale. A full-size humpback can weigh in at 40-tons. That’s a lot of heavy blubber that would surely flatten a kayaker if the whale had a direct hit,” Captain Michael Sack of Sanctuary Cruises, who witnessed the event, wrote on the company website.

The kayakers were tourists from the Britain, on a tour with Monterey Bay Kayaks. The company has since halted its tours.

“We’ve talked to some biologists and we feel it’s probably affecting the health of the whales, affecting their ability to feed so we just want to make sure that the whales are safe out there and keep everybody safe here,” Sean Furey, a guide with Monterey Bay Kayaks who was with the couple during the incident, told CNN affiliate KSBW-TV.

Preceeding this incident, there have been higher number of sightings of humpback whales in the Monterey Bay area over the past couple of years. The kayakers were both wearing life vests and paddling one mile from shore. 

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