Whale Throwing 2 New Hampshire Men Overboard in Freak Accident Has Internet Flipping Out

Two New Hampshire fisherman had to orca-strate a path to safety following a scary encounter. 

After a whale capsized their fishing boat while floating off the coast of Rye, N.H., Gregg Paquette and Ryland Kenney were unexpectedly thrown overboard into the Atlantic Ocean.

“I heard a big crackle,” Ryland told Seacoastonline in an interview published July 23. "When that happened… the bow tipped up and I went to the left and as [the boat] was rolling over I kind of jumped off horizontally to avoid the whale and the boat.”

Luckily, teen brothers Wyatt Yager and Colin Yager were on their own fishing trip nearby and watched it all go down, with one sibling even filming footage of the incident that has since gone viral.

In the July 24 clip shared to X (formerly known as Twitter), the whale can be seen breaching the water before landing on the rear of the neighboring boat, causing the two men to fly off just before the vessel flips over.

Social media users were quick to express their shock over the freak accident, with one writing on X, "This is more catastrophic than my dating life."

Another added, "This is crazy - whales don't do that by accident."

The moment also caught Colin by surprise.

“There was a whale, like, half a mile away that we saw, and then it slowly came on over and it was like breaching around us a little bit,” Colin recalled to WGME CBS 13 in an interview published July 23. “And then it just breached right in front of us onto the boat, which I mean, everyone’s seen the video now.”

After springing into action to help Gregg and Ryland, Wyatt was surprised by their reaction, recalling that the soaked fishermen were "kind of laughing."  

“They were in shock, they were a little bit cold, they didn’t really know what to make of it,” he told WGME CBS 13. “But they were in good spirits.”

In the end, neither Gregg or Ryland sustained any injuries during the ocean adventure, and they credit the siblings with their speedy recovery.

“Truly grateful to them,” Gregg said. “They were making the video, dropped everything, zoomed right over and plucked us out.”

Ryland is equally as thankful for how the events of the day played out. As he put it, “It's kind of a miracle that I'm alive."