Nature
PUBLISHED
Deep in British Columbia, Canada you can truly appreciate mother nature. The towering maple trees, the icy water, the open skies, the flying whales almost crushing you.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.A group of kayakers just off the Penn Islands were enjoying the sites of coastal Canada when a pod of humpback whales begun putting on a show. The Wildcoast Adventures video shows a mother Humpback with her calf as they were performing belly flops from multiple different angles.
"We thought they were gone. And that's when they really set off a show," Heather Lawrence, who filmed a segment of the video, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
"The baby jumped, and that was like, 'Wow, that's amazing.' But then the mom came up right away and she's humongous compared to baby," said Lawrence.
"Luckily it all went well and we had a huge thrill. It was really exhilarating. She's huge and that's all that you're seeing. She takes up the whole view."
It’s worth considering that Lawrence filmed the video using a telephoto lens, making the whale seem closer than it was. But while the last whale belly flop isn’t quite as a near as it seems on your screen, Lawrence told CBC it was under 10 meters (30 feet) away. Considering the size of these animals, that’s pretty amazing.
The females can grow up to 18 meters (60 feet) and weigh more than 36,000 kilograms (80,000 pounds). So, one of these whales landing on you would be no joke.
