Scanning the gentle swells off the U.K. coast, a pair of scuba divers headed back to shore. A splash in the distance caught their attention.
Approaching, they spotted a creature as rare as it is massive.
Chris Webb and Thomas Packman went scuba diving off the coast of Dover on April 16, according to a Facebook post from Webb. On their way back, they came across a humpback whale splashing around.
“You don’t see this in Dover often,” Webb said in the post, sharing photos and videos of the whale.
Video footage shows the whale splashing the water with its tail. The animal raises its tail and smacks it down, creating white-capped waves and a loud slapping sound.
The whale’s tail has a dark gray coloring with distinctive white patches, photos show.
“It was absolutely mesmerizing,” Packman told Kent Online. ”It was rolling around on the surface and just looked like it was having a good time really.”
Initially, the scuba divers thought the whale might have been caught in a net, Packman told the outlet. A closer look showed the animal was not stuck and seemed to be communicating with other animals, he said.
“You could see the whole length of it and see the white of it underneath when it rolled over,” Packman told Kent Online. “We were really surprised it hung around for as long as it did really.”
Seeing a humpback whale along the southern coast of the U.K. “is quite rare,” Packman told the outlet.
Humpback whales are marine mammals that can grow up to about 59 feet long and weigh up to about 88,000 pounds, according to The Wildlife Trusts. They primarily eat fish and krill, a small shrimp-like crustacean.
“Only in the last few years have humpback whale sightings been on the rise,” Abby Crosby, a conservation officer with Cornwall Wildlife Trust, said in a December news release. “Before then, it would’ve been extremely rare to spot one around the U.K.”
Humpback whales are more commonly seen off the northern coast of the U.K., according to The Wildlife Trust.
Webb and Packman spotted the splashing humpback whale on the southern coast. Dover is along the English Channel and about 70 miles southeast of London.
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