A snorkel tour group have a whale of a tale to tell after their guide was flipped into the air by a humpback.
The Gold Coast tour had initially faced disappointment as they returned to shore without any whale sightings, but their luck changed when three adult whales suddenly appeared and began swimming near their boat.
“They kept coming right near us, underneath us, swimming, you could see their eye sometimes looking at you checking you out,” dive master Mike Yates said.
He described the whales as “perfectly calm”, staying at the surface for an extended period.
The group stopped the required 100 metres from the whales and put out their flotation rope, before Yates was flung into the air.
“The whale’s tail eventually made contact with that rope,” he said.
“And just like you would if something landed on your hand or touched your hand without you knowing, you would flick it away, and it just so happened to flick me away.”
The group rushed back to their boat, with Yates now left with an incredible story to tell.
“Once the heart rate came down again, it was sort of like ‘okay, that was pretty cool’,” he said.
This article was produced with the assistance of 9ExPress.
