Man Accidentally Drops Camera Deep Into the Ocean. It Captured Jaw-Dropping Footage of a Whale
The most interesting moments in life are not anticipated. That's what happened to Canadian videographer, Peter Mieras, who works with Subvision Productions. Mieras dropped his camera, an Insta360, into the water off a dock in Barkley Bay, British Columbia. Dejected by the incident, Mieras was still considering a deep dive into the ocean to fetch his camera back but he had to hold his thought for a while as the natural equilibrium suddenly shifted in the location. “I thought, ‘That sucks,’” the videographer admitted to CTV News, as reported by The Inertia.
He had originally planned to attach his camera to a fishing pole and swing it into the sea, capture some great footage, and reel it back out. Mieras, while aware of the risks involved, had not expected the fishing line to snap that would sink his camera to deep depths, about 30 feet of water to be precise. As he contemplated diving underwater, a sense of chaos ensued in the local wildlife. A bait ball of small fishes was approaching and the predators had to attack. Sea lions and a flock of birds appeared out of nowhere and attacked the bait ball. Mieras rose to the occasion and pulled out another camera to document the action when he spotted a humpback whale nearby. “(It was) a little bit like a National Geographic moment,” the videographer said.
He and his wife, Kathy were stunned and watched in awe as the humpback whale, a top predator of the marine ecosystem, fed on the fishes. “Anything that size, that close, it almost took your breath away,” she said. But that was only a fragment of what they were about to witness. As the natural environment calmed down in the Bay area, Mieras returned on his mission to retrieve his old camera. Upon exploring the captured footage, he was stunned to find the camera bore witness to an epic prey-predator interaction between the humpback whale, sea lions, and the bait ball.
As the bait ball of fish floated through the region, a massive humpback whale, which Mieras and his wife had spotted from above the surface of the water, pierced through the fishes disorienting their formation. The small fish scattered over at raging velocities while the sun glistened over their bodies. The spectacular moment is often a once-in-a-lifetime event for many spectators and now everyone can see it on the YouTube channel, Nature Stock Footage (@naturestockfootage). Thousands of small fishes swirled back into the shape of a bait ball while the whale swam across them. “We just burst with glee. We just watched it over and over again because we just couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” Kathy expressed.
Eventually, a couple of sea lions joined the scene with the humpback whale still in the backdrop. The bait ball was now gone but the hyperactivity of the marine creatures moments before left the viewers electrified with the intensity. “A very lucky capture of some whale action underwater just below our dock. I dropped the iInsta360 X4 off the dock at 30ft deep and just let it run. It ran for 1hr 45 min and after a while, all the underwater life showed up,” the video’s description stated. According to Smithsonian Ocean, a bait ball is a defensive behavior by small fishes. It is a spherical formation of small fish that tightly pack together to protect themselves from predators. The annual Sardine Run in South Africa is an example of a bait ball.
You can follow @naturestockfootage on YouTube for more videos on marine life and environments.