Close call: Humpback whale nearly knocks paddler off board in Alaska

This was a whale of a scary tale.

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An Alaska man paddleboarding on July 13 in Passage Canal nearly was knocked off his board by a humpback whale.

Kevin Williams, of Anchorage, told the Anchorage Daily News that he and his son, Brian Williams, had seen the huge creature from a distance.

Then the whale dived.

“It went under for quite a long time,” Kevin Williams told the newspaper on Wednesday. “And then all of a sudden it surfaces right in front of me. And it’s coming towards me sort of like a submarine.”

His son was farther away and snapped a photograph. He said he noticed that the whale was directly under his father’s board.

Kevin Williams told the Daily News he was terrified.

But then there was a big splash and the whale was gone in a flash, Williams told the newspaper. The whale’s fin had missed his board by inches. His other son, Erik Williams, posted a photo of the incident on Twitter.

Federal regulations forbid boaters or paddlers to intentionally be closer than 100 yards from a humpback whale off the Alaska shores. In Kevin Williams’ case, he thought he was at a safe distance until the whale emerged from the water.

“We can’t always predict where (the whales) are going to come up,” Suzie Teerlink, a Juneau-based marine mammal specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Daily News. “And sometimes we might predict wrong, or they change direction. And we’ll have a close encounter.”

Kevin Williams said he was glad his son took photographs because “I don’t think anyone would believe me.”

“It was a scary encounter. It was not a comfortable experience,” he told the newspaper. “I dream about seeing whales up close. But not this close. Not while on a paddleboard.”