WATCH: Whale knocks man off surfboard in 'one in a million' encounter
NEAR SYDNEY, Australia (KFOR/Storyful) - If his GoPro camera hadn't captured it on camera, many might not believe one Australia man's incredible whale of a tale, after an actual whale jumped out of the ocean, knocked him off his surfboard, then dragged him 30 feet beneath the surface.
"I just got hit by a whale!" a shocked Jason Breen, 55, said to the camera when he was able to climb back onto his board.
Breen says he was wing surfing near Sydney's Mona Vale Beach, when, as seen in the video at the top of this story, a juvenile whale gave him a much different kind of ride - one that Breen feels lucky to have survived.
"When it came down on top of me it got caught in my leg rope, so as it dived down, I was getting dragged down," Breen told Today. "Luckily, I felt the leash break and from there I got released from under the whale’s body and was able to come to [the] surface, and thank my lucky stars that something that’s not supposed to break broke and ringed the webbing out," he continued.
"Usually, the mothers have barnacles and if it had barnacles rubbing against my face under the water, I would have been ripped apart," he said.
Not only was Breen shocked that he returned to dry land uninjured, he was also shocked that his story of a lifetime was captured on video.
"The whole thing was unusual, one in a million. It’s a massive ocean... and my GoPro, I wasn’t pointing or filming so to get the footage was amazing," Breen said.