Hauser, who lives on the Cook Islands, said to the Daily Mirror: “I wasn’t sure what the whale was up to when he approached me, and it didn’t stop pushing me around for over 10 minutes.”
“I didn’t want to panic, because I knew that he would pick up on my fear,” Hauser told the Daily Mirror. “I feel a very close kinship with animals, so despite my trepidation, I tried to stay calm and figure out how to get away from him.”
Hauser had never seen the whale before she entered the water that day.
On the biologist's nearby research vessel, Hauser's team was worried about her, abandoning their drone footage because, as Nan describes the moment, they "did not want to film my death."
Dolphins have been known to exhibit protective behavior and many stories have been told, but Hauser had never experienced something like that with a humpback.
For over 10 minutes, Hauser said, she was focused on the whale, unaware of the shark nearby. Sky more