Hilton Head Real Estate Blog

I decided to take some clients fishing this past Thursday, and after catching some bait just off of the beach, I pointed the boat on a Southeast heading and set off. On the way out, a client of mine(Jason) asked. “What’s that floating in the water”? I pulled back the throttles to what appeared to be a capsized boat at first. When all of a sudden this thing rolled over and blew water 15 ft in the air. At first I just stood there, and then I started yelling for someone to grab a camera. Yep, for the first time in my life I was looking at a giant whale, and it was only 3 miles off of the Hilton Head beach.

>

I shut the motors off, so as not to spook him while we searched for a camera, and noticed there was another whale with that one. I called the coast guard on the VHF to give them the GPS coordinates so they could relay them onto all the container ships coming into the Georgia ports as not to run over them by accident. While I was doing this, I noticed the one whale was swimming over to my boat, but went under about 20 ft away from the boat. Next thing I know, i feel my boat roll slightly, and then the motors started shaking and bouncing on the transom. The first thing that came into my mind was, he must have an itch(laughing slightly). He literally had his head up on one side, and tail up on the other while he was centered perfectly under the boat. All of this was taking place while I was talking to coast guard on my VHF. She asked me if the whale was entangled in anything, and I said “no”. Then she asked me if the other whale was a baby and, “I said he appears to be the same size”. Needless to say, as soon as he got out form under the motors I cranked up and pulled away for his safety and mine.

>

All in all he was about the size of school bus, and had barnacles all over him. I started fishing these waters when I was 14 years old, but have never encountered anything like this!!