Breaching humpback nearly crushes kayakers

On our 08:00 am Sanctuary Cruises whale tour, just outside the harbor in Moss Landing, two kayakers on a tandam kayak were almost crushed to death by a massive, near full-size humpback whale. We stopped to see a large aggregation of humpbacks feeding and carrying on with random acts of hijinks. There were also a lot of kayakers right in the middle of it all. Humpbacks were coming up next to and in the middle of many kayakers. It was amusing. It's all fun and games until someone gets jumped on. The next thing we knew, this thing launched right on top of these two kayakers. That was heavy. The video was shot by Sanctuary Cruises passenger Larry Plants. less On our 08:00 am Sanctuary Cruises whale tour, just outside the harbor in Moss Landing, two kayakers on a tandam kayak were almost crushed to death by a massive, near full-size humpback whale. We stopped to see ... more Photo: YouTube Photo: YouTube Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Breaching humpback nearly crushes kayakers 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

MOSS LANDING, Calif. — Two whale watchers in a tandem kayak were nearly crushed to death off the harbor in this Northern California town when a nearly full-grown humpback launched itself out of the sea and pancaked right beside the boat.

The boat was swamped and couple thrown into the water by the impact, but miraculously they were unhurt.

A video of the close call was shot by a Sanctuary Cruises whale tourist and posted Saturday on YouTube.

According to Yahoo News, one of the kayakers, a wildlife film director who was only identified as Tom, recounted the experience:

"We were taken under the water by the whale, perhaps in the down-draft," he said. "I think it brushed against me while I was out of the kayak ... Neither of us know how we weren't ended there and then."

He called the encounter "the most extraordinary thing to happen to me."