Photographer Jono Allen has gotten up close and personal with humpback whales. But one story sounds absolutely unbelievable. Allen says that a humpback whale actually tried to save him, thinking he was in distress.
Speaking with People, he explained that he's been photographing whales under the waves for months.
"I have been bumped, rolled, whacked over, cuddled by whales, I've had whales follow me to the boat," Allen told the outlet. "Whales have their own language.... Humpbacks have the longest appendages; they have these massive fins. We have these long arms — and so when we spin underwater, throw our arms around and start dancing underwater, that's their play language that they have."
He continued, "So they start spinning with you, and then you start spinning back with them, and you keep doing this little dance off together — and then eventually, you'll see them just click. So in those moments, you can get a quick frame. Or, you can get this eye-to-eye contact."
However, his craziest story with a humpback whale happened when the creature thought he was in trouble. The whale treated Allen like it would one of its calves. He explained, "When their calves are born, they can't swim, so they lift them up to breathe."
"I was swimming in the water and this mother humpback saw me and thought that was something wrong, and she came over to me and started trying to lift me up out of the water so I could breathe," he said.
Humpback Whale And Photographer
However, Allen didn't let the humpback finish with her action because he didn't want to hurt the creature. He thought of safety first and foremost while in the deep.
Outside of humpback whales, the photographer had a much more physical encounter with a tiger shark previously.
"I've been pushed out of the water by a tiger shark, physically pushed out of the water," he shares. "So a three-meter tiger comes through, sees myself... and just comes straight up, which is not the most ideal situation. It comes straight up, and then I go straight down to redirect."
"I put a hand on her nose just gently, and then lock the elbow," he says. "And then usually that's enough to redirect it, but then she was just like, 'No.' So she just pushed me back and started to push me back up the water."
"Then with my second hand on her to try and redirect her again," he adds. "Then after maybe four seconds of this, I'm looking at the birds and the boats and stuff. My head's out of the water and I have my hand on this tiger shark...and dry weight from the land, so I can push her back down."
