A gray whale looks at tourists on a boat in Mexico.

A Canadian tourist has died in Mexico after a whale jumped on to a boat in which she was travelling.

Vicente Martinez, the port director in the north-west Mexico beach resort of Cabo San Lucas, said that the 45-year-old woman died from injuries suffered when a surfacing gray whale crashed onto the tourist boat on Wednesday.

Firefighter commander Juan Carvajal Figueroa says the woman was in a boat with other tourists returning to port around noon when the whale jumped from the water and landed on the boat.

Mexican navy personnel responded to the scene and moved the woman to shore. She was taken to a clinic, where she died during treatment.