The ocean has always been a mystery, and its inhabitants are an endless source of wonder. While many people have an idea about what kind of creatures roam the deep, scientists are always discovering things about them that they never knew.
It goes without saying that the two most familiar sea creatures are sharks and whales, but there is still so much that we don’t know about them.
Among the many different species of whale, the blue whale is the largest by far. This warm-blooded mammal can reach nearly 100 feet in length and can weigh a staggering 330,000 pounds. But these are common facts. A lesser-known fact is that whales seem to connect with humans in ways that we still don’t understand.
Thanks to a viral video, we’ve learned something new about whales that goes beyond most people’s experiences.
The video has been viewed 17 million times, and it’s not hard to see why. It begins with Nan Hauser, a female diver swimming alongside an enormous whale. But there was something strange about this encounter.
Nan explained that the whale seemed intent on herding her — as though it wanted to keep her confined to a specific area.
Every time she tried to swim around the whale, it would block her with its massive body — as if it was trying to hide her. This happened again and again. Nan was perplexed. She’d never seen a whale behave like this before.
Nan spends a lot of time diving because she is a marine biologist. From the water, she is able to watch and record the behavior of the marine life around her — she is particularly interested in sharks and whales.
When she saw this particular whale behaving so strangely, she was both confused and intrigued.
In the video, she gently pets the whale, who responds lovingly to her touch. This is a rare and beautiful moment, the two are connected — a tiny human and a colossal animal.
From the moment Nan entered the water, the whale swam directly toward her and refused to leave her side.
Then, it began to push her, preventing her from swimming in any other direction.
Its nudging became more and more assertive. “Whoa, whoa, hold on,” Nan kept saying in her mind. But the whale was intent on controlling her movements.
It wouldn’t let her leave. Every time she got a little too far away, the whale would block her. What was it doing?
It turned out that this special whale knew something that Nan didn’t. He even pushed her onto his head and came eye-to-eye with her. The whale was trying to tell her something.
Although the whale wasn’t trying to hurt her, Nan was beginning to grow frightened.
Suddenly, he nosed her onto his pectoral fin and lifted her clean out the water! Seeing the boat, Nan began to call for help. Then, she saw something else.
Nan saw the unmistakable fin of a large tiger shark cutting through the water. It was only then that she realized exactly what was happening.
“Oh my God, he was protecting me,” Nan said, breathless. “The whale got me back to the boat. I got back to the boat and I was laughing! Like, “‘I lived through this?'”
