Diver Thought That Humpback Whale Was Going to Swallow Her — but It Was Just Protecting Her

A stunning encounter happened in September 2017 when Nan Daeschler Hauser, a marine biologist, dived into the South Pacific waters to capture footage of humpback whales for research. Ever since her childhood, Hauser was afraid of little spiders, but never whales or sharks. And after what happened with this protective humpback whale, her commitment to protect these creatures only became stronger. The humpback whale was swimming around Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. He popped open his eye so wide as if he had seen a ghost. He came right up to Hauser, nuzzled her head, and started pushing her through the water, as she described to The Guardian.

Terrified that she was about to get gobbled up by this whale, Hauser resisted and tried to push herself away from him. But the giant whale pulled her closer and tucked her under his pectoral fin. Aware that whales can sense fear, Hauser tried to remain calm. The whale refused to let her go. Since she was wearing a snorkel mask, Hauser was petrified thinking that she was going to drown by choking or get swallowed up by the whale. When she finally pulled herself to a distance, she noticed that the whale was tail slapping another animal. The mystery jolted her into an astonishing shock when she realized who that animal was. 

From a distance, Hauser noticed that the whale was trying to pull her atop his face while pushing another animal under his body. At first, she thought that the animal was another whale. But then she looked carefully, and her eyes popped just as wide as those of the whale. Whales usually slap their tail fins up and down, but this animal slapped its side to side. Revelation struck her that it was not another whale, but a huge tiger shark that measured around 18 feet. The shark had arched its body with its pectoral fins pointed downwards, which means it was in attack mode. “It was the largest tiger shark I had ever seen in my life,” Hauser described to BBC Earth.

Before horror could freeze her, Hauser realized that she was being carried away by the protective whale back to safety. The whale raced and zipped through the waters, and after about seven minutes of riding on his head, Hauser finally breathed a sigh of relief. “I love you,” Hauser kept screaming at the kind whale after hopping back into the boat, as seen in the footage shared by Caters TV. The footage has been viewed more than 12 million times.

“In 33 years of doing this work, this had never happened,” Hauser shared with The Guardian. After spending over 30 years interacting with whales, Hauser realized, for the first time, that these predators could be altruistic too. The whale didn’t just protect her from a vicious shark, but displayed a type of altruism that is rare even in humans. “It’s highly unusual. I've been underwater with whales for 28 years, and this is just really unusual behavior. It's crazy,” she told NPR.

But as it turns out, the behavior is not quite unusual in humpback whales, as her friend and scientist Robert Pittman documented in a study published in the journal Marine Mammal Science. After studying several humpback whales, he noted that these mammals naturally carry a protective instinct that materializes in the form of “inadvertent altruism,” which spills over from their own calves to human individuals, exactly what happened with Hauser.

A year later, Hauser dived into the same waters again and noticed this whale approaching her. She recognized him with a scar on his head and the pectoral fin that once protected her. She rubbed his face and began to cry. It was a lovely reunion. “If someone told me this story, I wouldn’t believe them,” she told the BBC.

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