freedom at the last second. morrow has been around the world and back again, filming the wonders of the world s oceans. his goal on this expedition is to videotape mating humpback whales in the waters of the silver banks whale sanctuary. literally on the last day of the trip we stumbled onto a young male and a young female and they were courting, and they were oblivious to us. they just let us do what we wanted. they weren t full-grown adults. they were, i guess for lack of a better analogy, they were teenagers, and they were amorous teenagers, and they were cavorting like teenagers do. but, remember, these aren t like your typical adolescents. humpback whales are one of the largest species on the planet. they grow up to 50 feet in length and weigh almost 79,000 pounds. normally humpbacks stay clear of humans, but come too close, and the results can be deadly. a swat of that gargantuan tail can turn a grown man into fish food with one direct hit. i think they started to think of
he d probably be killed. it nearly knocked him out. it was a nasty incident. it could have gone really south quite quickly. luckily, jim cosmic is okay. the gash on his head heals without stitches, and he s back doing what he loves just weeks later. he said that was the most intense experience he d ever had in terms of a physical altercation. i mean, he s a tough s.o.b., jim cosmic, but he got smacked by that whale and i think it humbled him a bit. and i think he s a little more cautious now when he goes in the water with big animals. cosmic is not the only one. the team tries to stay away from close-up shots after their teammate s close encounter with the back end of a 40-ton whale. after that incident we backed off a little bit and focused on the wide shots because i think we were getting a little too close. coming up. a black marlin skewers an angler. oh, my god. oh, my god.
an idyllic day filming humpback whales off the coast of the dominican republic suddenly turns to horror. that one whale came up right underneath me. i m looking, and, oh, my god, he s going to hit me. i mean, you ve got a couple tons of whale tail coming at you that fast, and it s barnacle and bone. it would have been like getting hit with a baseball bat the size of a tree. the day starts out calmly for two experienced divers, danny morrow and jim cosmic. morrow s had his share of close encounters. as we just witnessed, a massive octopus puts the squeeze on his good friend, doug pemberton. that close call turned out okay and doug clawed his way to freedom at the last second. morrow s been around the world and back again, filming the wonders of the world s oceans. his goal on this expedition is to videotape mating humpback whales in the waters of the
silver banks whale sanctuary. literally on the last day of the trip, we stumbled onto a young male and a young female and they were courting, and they were oblivious to us. they just let us do what we wanted. they weren t full-grown adults. they were, i guess for lack of a better analogy, they were teenagers, and they were amorous teenagers, and they were cavorting like teenagers do. but, remember, these aren t like your typical adolescents. humpback whales are one of the largest species on the planet. they grow up to 50 feet in length and weigh almost 79,000 pounds. normally, humpbacks stay clear of humans, but come too close, and the results can be deadly. a swat of that gargantuan tail can turn a grown man into fish food with one direct hit. i think they started to think of us as mosquitoes. as cameraman jim cosmic moves closer, the whale appears to swim away.
the whale tail had cut his head wide open. jim cosmic is stunned. i don t think it really registered immediately exactly what had actually happened, but i knew he was in trouble because he went straight to the surface and he was holding the top of his head. morrow thinks the whale intentionally took aim at his partner. whales and dolphins, their tales go like this. and for him to suddenly go like this, it s a clear deliberate motion that he was trying to get rid of this pesky person, or probably in its eyes, it was like a fly. we were bugging these animals because we were trying to get good close-up footage. weak, bleeding, cosmic swims to the surface and falls into the waiting boat. what did he hit you with? the tail. he just whacked me. morrow and the crew try to make sense of what happened. to this day, it s one of the scariest things morrow has ever seen. i think if that whale tail had been two or three inches lower, it would have hit him in the temple. he d proba