The New Jersey fisherman whose boat was capsized by a whale off the Jersey Shore has spoken out about his brush with the mammoth marine mammal.
“He was six feet in front of me, kind of like if you’ve ever saw ‘Jaws,'” angler Robert Riley told ABC 7 of the harrowing moment a whale sprang from the sea on Monday. “The fish just breached the water and I was like, ‘It’s going to land on us.'”
The whale, believed to be a juvenile humpback, was apparently feeding on the same school of fish that Riley was attempting to haul in, and leaped from the waters off Seaside Park when the boat came too close for comfort.
“The part I’ll never get out is the whale coming out of the water,” Riley told ABC. “The noise of the whale hitting the boat, it was loud.”
The whale collided with the 25-foot vessel, Nothing But Net, sending Riley and a fellow fisherman overboard.
They managed to swim to shore safely, and the boat eventually washed up, while the whale headed back out to sea.
Though he lived to tell the tale, Riley said he’ll likely keep his angling closer to land from now on.
“It’s a memory I’ll never get rid of,” he told ABC. “I don’t think I’ll ever be in the ocean again.”
With Post wires