hit a humpback whale<\/a> near Vancouver. Both the company and passengers say it was a surprise encounter. \u00a0<\/p>\nIn a statement, the company said \u201cOn Thursday afternoon, one of our whale-watching vessels undertook a decisive maneuver, in accordance with safety procedures, to avoid a humpback whale that had suddenly and unexpectedly surfaced directly in the vessel\u2019s path while transiting near Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n
It adds, that \u201calthough the vessel was able to stop almost immediately, there was minimal contact with the whale during the maneuver.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, some passengers onboard say the statement downplays what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t capture I think the magnitude of the injuries that were onboard or that could have occurred and I just thought it was really downplayed,\u201d said Karen Bergeron-Baggs in a Zoom interview.<\/p>\n
Karen Bergeron-Baggs and her husband David Baggs were part of the tour, on a visit from Ontario. The couple says roughly 95 passengers had been out on the water enjoying the beautiful weather for roughly two hours before the incident occurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And when it did, it happened fast, she says it happened within seconds, describing it as both shocking and surprising.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were going at a good speed. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s an appropriate or inappropriate speed, but the whale was definitely struck,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
According to her, some passengers were thrown from their seats. She says some had the wind knocked out of them, others had mild concussions and some lost teeth from the sudden impact.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, CHEK News reached out to Prince of Whales for a response and received the following emailed statement: \u201cWe stand by our statement and have no further comment at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bergeron-Baggs says she thinks the crew onboard did an excellent job of responding immediately after the incident and checking on each passenger. But she says in the future, tour companies could be more prepared with medical supplies on board.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A passenger who was on board the whale watching boat when the whale was hit earlier this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-240554","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}