For everyone who has read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the prospect of a whale wrecking havoc on you while you are at sea makes for a scary read. Well it turns out that Melvile’s writing was not all that fictitious after all. For hundreds of years man has been writing about monstrous sea creatures capsizing their boats or killing their crew.

Well on Thursday, fishermen sailing off the coast of New Jersey received an unexpected guest - a humpback whale that almost ended up inside their boat.

A video captured by Paul Ziolkowski shows a humpback whale breaching right next to their boat. Mr Ziolkowski, who goes by the name Pauly Walnuts on Facebook, writes, "That humpback was chasing bunker all the way up to the side jumped out of the water and tapped the Hull of my boat knocking bunker into the boat."

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