VANCOUVER -- A family out for a boat ride on British Columbia's coast last week had an extremely close encounter with a humpback whale.
Art Lam and his family were making their way back from an outing in Toba Inlet, north of Powell River on B.C's mainland.
In the distance, they spotted the whale surfacing to breathe, so they started recording it.
In the two-minute video, the animal stays close to the surface, cresting the water periodically to breathe, and making its way closer to the family's boat.
The whale gets closer and closer and soon maybe a little too close for comfort, passing right underneath the boat before swimming away.
Lam said his family has been vacationing on nearby Savary Island for years, and has seen whales from a distance, either from shore or from a ferry. He said he's never had an experience quite like the one in the video before.
"Absolutely not, that's the closest I've ever been to a whale," Lam said.
"We've been going up to Savary Island for 40 years now and never seen anything like it," added his wife, Kirsten Ellerbeck. "Everybody was just in awe."
