A photographer has captured footage of the moment an 25m-long blue whale capsized his boat off the coast of California.

Dale Frink was on a whale-watching trip from San Diego on 2 July when the boat came across some blue whales, which Frink said “appeared to be doing deep dives in one spot indicating that they were feeding down deep in a specific area”.

The boat followed the whales from behind and to the left to try and avoid getting in their way, but one whale took a sharp right turn in front of them and the boat’s captain turned off the engine as they did not know where the whale would resurface.

Explaining what happened next, Frink said:

“Unfortunately for us, the Blue Whales eventually resurfaced directly behind the boat without warning, mouths completely open in the middle of another lunge feed. We had little time to react. At the time I had two GoPro Cameras mounted pointing directly in front of the boat, one of them caught me turning to see the whale and snap a photo of the first whale making contact with the boat. The second blue whale of the pair then came up even closer and bumped the boat again, giving it the last bit of inertia it needed to go completely overboard.”

Luckily, both Frink and the captain of the boat were quickly picked up by another vessel nearby with only a few cuts and bruises from the incident.