Nan Hauser

I slid down his back.

He kept trying to put me under his pectoral fin.

And his pectoral fin is huge.

You know, they have the longest pectoral fins of any whale.

They're about a third the size of the body.

So if the pectoral fin is 15 feet long and very wide and very thick, he can get me under his pectoral fin.

And that's what they do to seals.

They hide them under the peck fin.

But with a snorkel and mask on, there was no way that I was going to survive under there.

Whales have really interesting eyes, and when they're really panicked about something or interested about something, we call it eye widening, and they open their eye so wide.

It's like this intense, round, deep knowledge when they open their eyes really wide.

Like, what the hell is going on?

I was thinking, what does this whale know that I don't know?

What is he trying to say to me?

So that's when I saw another animal, but I just thought that it was another whale, a smaller whale.

I mean, it's not that rare to see species together.

I thought, oh my gosh, what is that?

It's coming right towards me.

I've seen a lot of sharks.

We have a lot of sharks around here.