An Australian man died and his companion was seriously injured when a whale flipped their boat in Botany Bay, off Sydney, and threw them into the water.
The accident occurred at 6 a.m. when the two men, Stuart Collings, 61, and his brother-in-law, Darren Curmi, 53, were in their runabout. No one is sure exactly what happened, but apparently a whale breached under the boat.. It was “an absolute freak accident,” police said.
Other boaters called authorities saying that an empty boat was running in circles in the bay and two people were in the water. It took 45 minutes for paramedics to reach the two men. They performed CPR on Collings on their rescue boat but he did not respond. Witnesses said that Curmi had kept Collings afloat after the accident. For his part, Curmi was in shock, and paramedics took him to a local hospital, where he was in stable condition.
The New South Wales police issued a statement, saying “The runabout vessel was likely to have struck or been impacted by a whale breaching, causing the boat to tilt, ejecting them both.”
“There are a lot of whales out there,” said Siobhan Munro, the acting police superintendent.
Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/30/man-dies-after-suspected-whale-collision-capsized-boat-in-sydney and see the video below:
