Watch: Whale capsizes boat, launches fishermen into ocean

In an experience they won’t soon forget, two East Coast striper fishermen were nearly blown over by a humpback whale. A nearby skipper caught video footage of the predicament, which unfolded Tuesday off the coast of New Hampshire. The viral clip shows the massive whale jumping out of the boat and landing on it, sending the two fishermen flying overboard.

Luckily, a few good Samaritans came to their rescue, and they say neither fisherman was injured. They were also able to recover their capsized boat with the help of the U.S. Coast Guard and a local towboat service. As for the giant humpback, it’s still alive and feeding on baitfish near the mouth of the Pisquataqua River.

“We looked at it afterward and it continued to break like it had before,” said Capt. Mike Genestreti Outdoor living. “We’ve seen it since then, and I even spotted it outside Wentworth this morning.”

A Maine fishing guide and owner of MAG chartersGenestreti was one of the skippers who helped pull the two fishermen from the ocean after the whale capsized their boat, the Park(He was accompanied by two young fishermen, one of whom recorded the video on his phone.) There were four or five other boats in the area fishing for striped bass, and although you can’t see Genestreti’s boat in the video, it was only 20 to 30 yards from the Park when the whale landed on it.

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“It was like a car crash. Just insanely violent and really loud,” he recalls. “I saw the boat being rocked back and forth, saw a man flying away and then I saw the [boat] capsizing, which was really scary.”

Genestreti, who has lived on the Pisquataqua his entire life, says the one-in-a-million-time encounter was an honest accident. He explains that a week earlier, a huge bunker run had appeared at the mouth of the tidal river. This brought an influx of large striped bass to shore, along with the humpback whale. He says the whale was following the school of baitfish at the same time that local striped fishermen were chasing the feed.

“All those bunkers had literally put the humpback in the river, so it was scaring the living daylights out of people. Everyone knew it was there.”

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Genestreti says he doesn’t think the two fishermen who were thrown out were irresponsible. And he’s surprised by the negative reactions the video has gotten from people who say the fishermen disrespected the whale and intruded on its feeding grounds. He does, however, admit that they could have pulled back the bait ball and given the whale a bit more space. NOAA recommends keep a minimum distance of 100 meters from whales. Additional requirements apply to more sensitive species, such as whales.

“When those bunker pods are so tightly packed together, the whale is feeding from underneath and can’t look up and see through the pod. So when I’m out there, especially with my clients, we always stay on the edge of the school. We’re close to the bunker feed, but we’re not on “It was definitely the wrong place, the wrong time … but I think it was also because they were not aware of their surroundings. They had striper fever. They were focused on the fish.”

The same goes for the whale.



Dac Collins