Massive whale breaches next to father, son fishermen off NJ coast

A video of a whale breach alongside a fishing boat at the Jersey Shore has gone viral.

Zach Piller, 23, said that he and his dad fish often, and were near Bradley Beach when their memorable encounter happened on Wednesday.

Piller, a Pennsylvania resident from the Philadelphia area, happened to have his cell phone trained on his dad's line as he was reeling in a fish when the massive humpback whale launched from the ocean.

Tiny fish can be seen scattering in the air as the whale emerges and flops back into the water, making contact with the 18-foot-long boat, but not causing any damage.

ARCHIVE 2020: A boat struck by a whale off Seaside Park that threw two men into the water (courtesy: Lauren Cilento Carannanten)

Two years ago, two fishermen were not as undisturbed — when a different whale breached right onto their boat off Seaside Park — capsizing it and tossing both men into the water.

Luckily, both men in the June 2020 encounter were unharmed.

Whale sightings up at the Jersey Shore

Experts suspect that whales may be hanging around off the Jersey coast because of increasing ocean water temperatures.

“Lots of whales are being seen between April and December, and they do stay here for quite a bit, the average is about a month,” Rutgers University whale expert Danielle Brown told New Jersey 101.5 this summer.

“We don’t know exactly where these whales are coming from, how they are finding this area, are they coming from the south, are they coming down from the north.”

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