Nan Hauser made a prediction when she was younger that she was going to be killed by a whale. This would be weird for one of us to make, but Nan works as a Marine Biologist who specializes in whale conservation!
Nan has spent hours in the water learning all she can about these amazing creatures. She looks at their pod movements and records loads of data to help protect them.
“I’ve always said I’d be killed by a whale,” Nan, a renowned marine biologist and President and Director of the Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation and Director of the Cook Islands Whale & Wildlife Centre, told Press Herald.
But one October morning, when Nan was diving in waters off of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, the total opposite happened. A whale, who Nan thought was trying to kill her, was actually saving her life.
While looking for whales to study on a particular trip, she saw a humpback whale. Getting in the water and swimming over to the giant creature, she was in the element – until the whale began to act different than she had ever seen.
“That whale was intent on keeping me away and hiding me and I didn’t know why,” Nan told The Dodo. “He came right for me he didn’t stop. He kept pushing me and I was like ‘Whoa, whoa,’ you know.”
Every time she tried to move farther away from the whale, he would nudge her away from the boat and closer to him. She had never before seen this kind of behavior in the animals and she was scared.
“He put his eye next to my eye. I was like what is going on here. He didn’t want to hurt me,” Nan recalled. “He had me on his head and he rolled me over and I was on his chin and then I was down his pectoral fin and he wouldn’t leave me alone. He wouldn’t stop!”
The longer the whale held onto Nan, the more scared she began to feel. It was as if her life was in danger.
“I was really scared. I mean, who wouldn’t be scared? Rolling around and rolling down the back of a whale,” Nan said. “I kept thinking, ‘Get me out of here!’ Then he lifted me up on his pec fin. Literally out of the water and I’m yelling to everybody on my boat, ‘Somebody come help me.’”
After getting buffeted by the whale for over ten minutes, she finally learned what was happening.
Lurking in the watery nearby shadows was a HUGE tiger shark that the whale was doing his best to keep at bay!
Eventually, the shark disappeared, and the whale finally let Nan go. She got back onto her boat feeling shaken up and overcome with emotion.
“I went, ‘Oh my God, he was protecting me,” Nan recalled. “I got to the back of the boat and I was just laughing but it was sort of a nervous laugh like I lived through this. Why did this happen to me? This is crazy and I’ve been doing this for 28 years.”
When Nan looked out to sea, she could still see the whale close by, and he was spouting out of his blowhole as if to say, “I’m glad you’re safe!”
“I love you too, I do. I love you,” Nan told the whale in response.
After that kind of experience with the animals she spends her life in devotion to, it was a reminder of why she did the work she did. Whales were truly selfless creatures.
“These animals have an altruistic behavior they will risk themselves to save another species like a fireman would run into a house on fire.” Nan explained. “I can’t say for sure what was going on in his head but he protected me from potential danger. This was a once in a lifetime experience.”
You need to watch her encounter below!
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