temple. 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. i honestly thought he was dead. and jaws takes the bait and comes back for the main co
wide open. jim cosmic is stunned. i don t think he 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 his 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. 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. think if that whale tail had been two or three inches lower it would have hit him in the
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 divers follow. you can t get a good shot of a big animal unless you get close to it. and we were trying to get as
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 his 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. 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. think if that whale tail had been two or three inches lower it would have hit him in the temple. 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
close as we can, and maybe we pushed it a bit too far this particular day. this time with dangerous consequences. i think it s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security when you re filming big animals. we were right in their face for the better part of three hours. and towards the end of it, i think they just got fed up. as morrow s partner swims in for a better shot, the 40-ton monster with a flick of his massive tail delivers an incredible blow. this particular male was probably 40 feet long, maybe 50 feet long, which means he was probably in the neighborhood of 40 or 50 tons. i think that tail probably weighed a few ton, and it s solid bone and barnacles. and it came at him fast and hard. he really got hit. i asked him if he was okay, and he pulled his hand away from his head and it had blood on it. the whale tail had cut his head wide open. jim cosmic is stunned. i don t think he registered immediately exactly what had actually happened, but i knew he was in tro