John Hopkins

But again, one that Nan can say is rooted in scientific fact.

After their reunion, Nan bids a heartfelt goodbye to the whale.

He rolls onto his side, lifts his tail flute, and with a gentle splash, slides serenely back into the deep.

Nan returns to land, goes to her office, and records the events of that day.

Last year's encounter appeared to demonstrate humpback whales' ability to show altruism towards another species.

This second encounter a year later seems to indicate something else, that humpbacks are not only capable of interspecies recognition, but can actually form bonds with humans.

It's a small sample size, but if true, it points towards something fascinating.

Even now, Nan is hesitant to make any bold categorical claims.

More evidence is required before concrete conclusions can be drawn.

But that's not to say we can't learn anything from her experience.

It can teach us something, Nan says, about the natural world and about ourselves.

Next time, we travel to Tasmania to tell a survival story centered on one of the strangest natural phenomena on Earth, a sea stack.

An impossibly slender needle of rock that rises from the turbulent waves.

Over 200 feet tall, but just 13 feet in diameter, the fact that it remains standing seems to defy logic.

And it's while tackling this striking natural structure that Celia Bull faces an extreme physical and psychological ordeal.

When her climbing partner and boyfriend Paul is severely injured, he is left dangling from a rope on the side of the monolith, his blood pouring into the ocean below.

Suspended quite literally between life and death, it is up to Celia to rescue him before the rising tide can claim him.

That's next time on Real Survival Stories.

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It's March 1904 in Port Arthur, Manchuria, China.