Breaching Humpback whale flips boat off New Hampshire coast, two people thrown overboard

Shocking footage has captured the moment two people were launched into the ocean after a whale landed on their fishing boat.

• A whale capsized a seven-metre fishing boat off the New Hampshire coast in the US.
• Two men were thrown overboard, but both escaped without injuries.
• The ordeal was captured on video by two brothers who leapt to the rescue.

Shocking footage has captured the moment two people were launched into the ocean after a whale landed on their fishing boat.

The video was taken off the New Hampshire coast in the US this morning, showing a humpback whale appear from the depths below before capsizing the 7-metre vessel.

“We didn’t see him for a couple of minutes, and then the next thing we knew, he popped up and landed right on the transom of the boat,” Gregg Paquette, who was aboard the fishing boat, told WCVB-TV.

“I just looked up and just kind of saw the boat tipping, and I said, ‘The only way to avoid this is to just kind of jump horizontally away,’” Paquette said.

Wyatt Yager, 19, was with his brother Colin, 16, on another fishing boat when they saw the whale before the incident and began recording.

Video footage has captured the moment a breaching humpback whale landed on a fishing boat in the US, launching two fishermen into the ocean.

“I saw it go up so I was just lucky enough to be facing the right direction,” Colin told WCVB-TV.

“I saw it come up, and I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s going to hit the boat,’ and then it kind of started to flip,” he said.

Ryland Kenney was also aboard the capsized boat, telling WCVB-TV; “Everything seemed like in slow motion. It was really weird. Everyone was like, ‘Oh, it was eight seconds. How’d you move so fast?’ But it was almost slow motion, like a movie.”

Both men escaped without any injuries.

One of the men jumped for the boat while the other was thrown overboard as it began to flip before the Yager brother rushed to their aid and helped pull them out of the water.

“Truly grateful to them,” Paquette told WCVB-TV. “They were making the video, dropped everything, zoomed right over and plucked us out.”

“It’s kind of a miracle that I’m alive,” Kenney said. “I don’t know what was going through my head. Just, kind of, survival.”

The US Coast Guard said no one had sustained injuries in the incident and it had been reported to the Center of Coastal Studies Marine Animal Hotline and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Benjamin Plummer is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. He has worked for the Herald since 2022.