An Arizona couple vacationing in Hawaii went on a whale-watching tour aboard a traditional outrigger canoe and certainly got their money’s worth.
“We were out whale watching and totally caught off guard,” cameraman Laurent Lebihan notes on the video he posted. “Good thing it was an adolescent whale and nothing bad happened.”
Lebihan and his girlfriend were paddling a few hundred yards off the coast of Maui with some friends when a humpback whale launched itself several feet above the surface and struck the bow of the canoe, knocking it to port.
The impressive mammal then plummeted back down, crashing into the ocean with a gigantic belly-flop.
‘Oh my God,’ Lebihan can be heard saying on the tape. ‘Wow!’
Just as quickly, the mammal then swims off, seemingly unhurt, but not before treating its new friends to a final spray of water from its blowhole.
