A man has escaped unscathed after a juvenile humpback whale leapt from the sea and collected him as he was wing surfing off Sydney's Northern Beaches this morning.
The incident at Mona Vale at 10.30am today was remarkably caught on a GoPro camera that Newport man Jason Breen, 55, had running.
Breen was dragged below the surface of the water from the impact of being hit and his ankle rope snapped.
"It came down, landed straight on me and got caught in my leash," Breen told 9News.
"It probably dragged me 20 or 30 feet under, to be honest,"
"I thought it was all over, then I felt my leash break and I thought, 'Thank god' and came up to the top."
He was miraculously not seriously injured during the incident.
Breen told 9News he believed the baby whale's smaller size was what saved his life.
"It was a big calf, if it had barnacles I would have been ripped apart because the whale's body was beside me the whole time," he said.
Passerby Paul Netteback was filming Breen surf by pure coincidence when he witnessed the whale topple him.
"I wanted to keep filming but then I thought someone might have just died, so I stopped filming and I got triple zero ready," he said.
Wing surfing, also known as wing foiling, is an up-and-coming sport that sees the surfer holding on to a sail-like wing while riding a raised board.
