Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
TwitThis
Too Close
Donning masks and fins, the swimmers quietly slid into the tepid water and lined up, shoulder to shoulder, as they'd done all week. It was a safeguard they'd been taught to keep individuals from scattering or getting too close to the animals. For more than an hour, they followed the whales, snapping underwater photos, enchanted by the loud, low-pitched song the male used. When the whales paused to sleep -- the baby on top of the mother so she could bring it to the surface every five minutes to breathe -- the group got within 20 feet of the pair.In the excitement, their line formation disappeared. Before she knew it, Janet Blackwelder found herself inches from the 3,000-pound baby. Reaching out, she gently touched it, then surfaced. "I can't believe it! I touched the baby!" she cried out. The whale had moved under her hand, "like it was letting me pet it," she said later. She could see Randy and Gwen nearby.
Just as Janet ducked back under, the water filled with bubbles. She and the Thorntons were nearly on top of the whales, and the mother and her calf appeared to be surfacing. "We were drawn into the whales by the current," says Randy, "and that startled the baby and woke the mother." Randy put his hands out in front of him, but the effect was the same as trying to stop a runaway freight train. The mother whale flipped her enormous tail up, smacking Randy in the right thigh with its 15-foot fluke, and then down, striking Janet on the left side from her hip to her head.
As Gwen was tossed 20 feet in the churning backwash, Randy felt himself sinking. His leg seared with pain, like somebody was stabbing him with a dagger. When he gathered the courage to look down, he saw his right leg was still attached but facing in the wrong direction. The force of the blow had snapped his thighbone in half like a dry twig. Incredibly, the break hadn't severed his femoral artery, or he'd have bled to death in minutes. Using only his arms, Randy managed to swim ten feet to the surface. Where was Gwen? he wondered. Had she been hit too? "Somebody help!" he shouted, scrambling to stay afloat.
When the water turned calm and bright stands of orange coral came back into focus, Bridgette Server took a quick look around. She'd been filming the whales sleeping when they'd suddenly moved away. She knew her mother had been nearby but didn't see her now. She felt a strong urge to turn around again. There was Janet, pale and listless, drifting to the bottom of the sea. The slap of the whale's tail had torn her mask off; her neck was bent at an angle and appeared to be broken.
Bridgette quickly dove down, grabbed hold of the large zipper on the back of her mom's scuba suit and pulled her to the surface. "My mom's dead! Where's my dad? My mom's dead!" she yelled. Too shocked to cry, she cradled Janet's head in the water. "Mom, can you hear me?" she asked.
Advertisement 
