A whale came out of nowhere, breached the water, and landed on a small, 19-foot boat off the coast of Plymouth, MA, over the weekend, according to video footage that captured the "insane" moment.
The incident happened at around 10 a.m. on July 24, off the coast of White Horse Beach. Luckily there were no injuries, Plymouth Harbormaster Chad Hunter told NBC10 Boston.
The video shows the whale coming out of the water and smashing down on top of the boat, causing it to briefly submerge, before the whale goes back into the water and the boat continues to float.
"All of a sudden, full breach, ten feet out of the water," witness Ryder Parkhurst told NBC10, "slams on top of his guy's boat, like his bow goes down, basically, into the water, engine out, full thing pops off, whale rolls over the side of it, totally fine, but his boat was messed up."
"It was insane," Parkhurst added. "The guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all. Pops up, bang...right on the bow of the guy's boat."
Hunter went on to mention how rare it is for a whale to breach the water and hit a boat, and added that it was very lucky nobody was injured.
"The boat was in the right place at the wrong time," said Hunter. "This could have been much worse for all involved. Children like to lean over the side of the boat to watch the fish, so it is very lucky that nobody got hurt here. An incident like this is pretty rare, but very dangerous to boaters."
Laura Howes, director of Marine Education and Conservation at Boston Harbor City Cruises, told ABC News what boaters should do when in an area where whales could be.
"The most important thing a boater can do is keep a distance. You want to stay at least 100 feet away," Howes said.
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She added that the whale was "lunge feeding," which is when a whale moves fast to consume a large amount of prey at the surface.
"[Boaters] can easily move away from that direction, but a whale doesn't always quite know what's going on at the surface," Howes said.
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Hunter said there were plenty of boats out in the water that day "for recreational fishing due to an abundance of bait fish." The harbormaster crews had even been monitoring the waters after a whale bumped into a boat on Friday.
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