A Whale Saved My Life | Close Encounters | BBC Earth

It was the largest tiger shark I've ever seen in my life and it was coming right for me. I was in my boat off of the reef which is very close to the land in Raroponga in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific and we were making a film so the director asked me if I would get in the water to allow him to shoot more footage. So I slipped over the edge and started swimming very slowly towards a couple whales when one of them looked up at me and just started charging towards me. So I stopped and he was about to knock into me when I put my hand up so my hand is up against his head and he's pushing me and at this point I'm thinking okay I've been underwater with whales for 30 years this has never happened. In my mind I knew that there was the chance that I could easily be killed by this whale. I didn't take my eyes off him and you can't take your eyes off them it's if you do you could get hit by the pectoral fin or the tail fluke or the peduncle or the head any part of the body. I do keep a very great distance from the whales. It's their backyard I'm very careful not to infringe on what they're doing so I kept trying to get away he was trying to be gentle but when he's trying to talk me under his pectoral fin like this it really hurt and I didn't want to go under his pectoral fin because I had a snorkel and mask on and I would drown and so I kept holding it and like putting it underneath my shoulder like this but you know along his pectoral fin and his tail fluke there are barnacles and the barnacles are very sharp and so I was getting a bit cut up too. At one point he lifted me right up out of the water literally out of the water that was just unreal. I wasn't up there for too long before poof I was right back down underwater again. He was getting frustrated he was and so at that point I think he said okay fine I'm just I'm gonna put you on my face I'm holding on like a little kid to the face of this enormous whale holding onto his tubercles and I'm thinking in the back of my mind wait didn't my grandmother when she was 102 say please don't ever be swallowed by a whale but he was also trying to tell me something and had an eye that was so wide it was like he had just seen the ghost so I knew something was up and then when I finally got just a tiny bit away from him and he came to turn and then he put me back on his head but in that brief moment I looked over at the other whale that was there and she was tail slapping and I look over at her and there's another whale there and it was quite large and it started swimming rapidly towards me and I looked more carefully I mean you have to remember I was still in shock from being thrown around by a whale for 10 minutes so far and and this animal had its pec fins down pointed down like this and was arching and its tail was going from side to side instead of up and down so I immediately knew it was the largest tiger shark I've ever seen in my life and I've spent my entire life underwater and I've seen plenty of tiger sharks this was like a truck this was a huge tiger shark and it was coming right for me that's when I did have a little bit of a panic and then the whale just at that moment came up behind me and put me on his head and just pushed me as fast as he could to the back of the boat I caught a ride on a whale for 10 and a half minutes I mean I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined that this would happen I love you too I love you too I do I love you this adventure came out of the blue and I still to this day can't believe it happened and being a scientist it's even harder if someone told me this story I wouldn't believe them it's crazy it's crazy and it's crazy that this whale did this but but my friend Robert Pittman wrote a paper about altruism in humpback whales about how humpback whales have altruistic behavior towards other animals not just their own species but other animals altruism is a true act of kindness when you protect someone without asking or expecting anything in return so you might even risk your life and so it started sort of all sort of flooding in about how this was an experience of perhaps the whale displaying his altruistic behavior to push me away from this very huge shark I never thought in a million years that I would see this particular individual again never I mean why would I in 20 plus years of research just here in the Cook Islands only two whales have returned here and so when he did come back I I was blown away I still am so one year and 15 days later I was out on my boat doing my research and a fisherman radioed me and said there was a whale off the harbor so I came up to the harbor and sure enough there was a whale and he dove and when he dove I looked at his funny tail fluke because there were two notches in it and I thought that's odd that looks a little bit kind of like the whale that had pushed me away from the shark and I actually waited and the next thing I knew the whale came up next to the side of the boat he ignored everyone else on the boat and he stared directly at me and he was just like a meter away and I looked at him and I saw a scar on his head and I just screamed he's back I can't believe it he's back and sure enough there he was and he was staring at me and I started to cry I was so blown away that he was actually there I just whipped on my my wet skin and and slid over the side of the water and I swam down next to him and he he opened his eyes and he just looked at me and kept nudging me and nudging me and nudging me with his head and it was it was just nuzzling his his moving his head in my belly and it was like seeing your dog that you haven't seen for six months and it was just like how do you hug such a big huge animal he put his pectoral fin right under me and he just held it at the surface of the water like this just like this and I just laid on it and I hugged it I held onto him like this and I hugged it I laid there forever I just laid there and he didn't move either so we swam up to the back of the boat where everyone was crying and I I popped up on the back of the boat and sat there with my feet in the water and he hung there looking at me and he just hung there for about 20 minutes and we went in I said goodbye and I said again same thing I said to him the first time I love you and thank you so if I had to name the emotions I was feeling during this encounter I would say that I was shocked in a very good way I was I mean I guess I could say I was pretty blown away I felt love felt happiness I was speechless for the longest time I couldn't even really call people and tell them it was too sacred I can say that he will always be a part of me and on my mind I hope to see him again someday because I really truly do miss him I I don't know if anybody would ever believe it just like it's so hard for me to believe that he already came back once I'd be in there with him in two seconds and I'm going to start crying just thinking about it I miss him I mean who misses a whale you know I do I genuinely believe that someday I will see him again I really do