Captain speaks out after whale sinks rescue boat
A New Jersey fireboat captain is speaking out after a whale sank his rescue boat over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
"We were doing about maybe seven or eight knots, and all of a sudden, there was this loud bang," Carteret Fire Department Chief Eric Wahl recalled to ABC News.
Wahl and his crew were returning from a Fourth of July security detail on Saturday when a surfacing whale, believed to be a humpback whale, struck their rescue boat off the coast of New Jersey.
"I opened up the engine hatch and looked below, and to my surprise, there was a big hole in the back wall of the boat, and seawater was pouring into it at a quick pace," Wahl said. "We grabbed what we could. We sounded our distress signals."
Cody Binkley happened to be nearby and raced to the scene in his boat.
"By the time we heard the call for help and got to them, the boat went from them being on deck and leaning towards the rear to those guys having to bail out and jump in," Binkley told ABC News.
Binkley said the rescue boat sank within one minute.
"The three guys were in their life jackets, and we managed to get them on board," he said.
Carteret Fire Department Lt. Kevin Gomm, who was on the fireboat with Wahl and firefighter Jason Lombardi, said that the group's civilian rescuers told them they had been "watching the pod of whales surface in that area" approximately "30 seconds to a minute before we had come by."
Binkley captured a video of the whale swimming near the surface of the water after the incident.
Sara Morris, executive director of Shoals Marine Laboratory, which is operated by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire, told ABC News the whale that struck Wahl, Gomm, and Lombardi's boat may not have been honing in on it, adding that the collision was more likely an accident.
"They can be breaching or doing other behaviors which involve lunch feeding," Morris said. "I think the boat was in the wrong place at the wrong time, not something where the whale was specifically targeting a boat."
The fireboat crew said they are determined not to let their whale encounter hold them back. They said they plan on being back out on the water again on Tuesday.
