The surfing event at the Paris Olympics took place on the small island of Tahiti in the South Pacific. During the women’s semi-finals of this event, a whale unexpectedly became an uninvited guest, leaping out of the sea, capturing the attention of spectators and photographers.
According to reports from the Associated Press, on August 5th, as Brazilian surfer Tatiana Weston-Webb and Costa Rican surfer Brisa Hennessy were competing in the semi-finals, the whale suddenly breached, creating a unforgettable moment for onlookers while the two athletes maintained a safe distance.
Around the world, it is not uncommon for wild animals such as birds, seals, and even sharks to appear while people are engaging in surfing activities.
The surfing competition venue for this Olympics in Tahiti is nearly 10,000 miles (approximately 16,000 kilometers) away from the host city of Paris. Whales gather around Tahiti during mating, calving, and migration seasons. There are several marine protected areas in the vicinity.
Tahiti, the largest island in the Windward Islands of French Polynesia, is renowned for its black sand beaches and is a popular tourist destination.
As reported by CNN, in March of this year, indigenous leaders from Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawaii, Cook Islands, and other places signed a declaration called the “Declaration of the Ocean,” recognizing whales as legal entities with the right to migrate freely without human interference and to live in a healthy environment.
The signing of this agreement aims to protect the declining whale populations. Data from the World Wide Fund for Nature shows that about 300,000 whales or dolphins are unintentionally caught in fishing activities as bycatch each year.
Some whale species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, have seen their numbers decrease to less than 360 individuals.
Scientists estimate that before human activities and whaling, there were between 4 to 5 million whales in the world’s oceans. Today, they speculate that there are just over 1 million whales left in the oceans.
In a previous report, it was mentioned that Robert Addie, a man from New Hampshire, captured a rare scene of three humpback whales synchronously breaching off the coast of Massachusetts last July.
Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium, noted that while humpback whales breaching simultaneously is not unheard of, seeing three do so at the same time is “a bit rare” and “very cool.”
He explained that humpback whales breach not for feeding purposes but possibly to aid digestion, remove parasites, communicate acoustically, or simply for fun.