Would a whale deliberately destroy a yacht?

The 40-ton whale crash-landing on a boat off Cape Town Photograph: Picture: Universal News And Sport (Europe)/Universal News And Sport (Europe)

Ralph Motes and Paloma Werner were out for a nice sailing trip off Cape Town in their 33ft yacht when they got more than they bargained for. While these middle-aged South African sailors were minding their own business, a 40-tonne whale leapt out of the water and on to their boat. Or was it that simple? Other reports claim that boats in the area had been harassing the animal by going closer than the 300-metre exclusion zone required by marine authorities.

Shades of Moby-Dick indeed. Nor was the story of Captain Ahab's ship being stove and sunk by a sperm whale fictional. There are plenty of documented cases of irate whales (who wouldn't be, with humans sticking harpoons in you?) turning on their tormentors.

This whale, however, was a right whale, a blubber-rich species hunted to near-extinction in the mid-20th century. It's so-called because it floats when dead and was therefore the right whale to catch. The heaviest of all cetaceans – for all that it feeds exclusively on minute zooplankton – it migrates to South African waters to breed and calve. By the looks of it, this particular whale was a juvenile – notorious for their playful and not always well judged leaps.

I've just returned from Cape Cod, where naturalists have been treated to an inordinate amount of whale breaching in the past few weeks. "There's lots of weird stuff going on this year," Dr Carole Carlsen of the Dolphin Fleet whalewatch boats told me. This last week alone, I've seen humpbacks, right whales and even fin whales – the second largest animal in existence – throwing themselves out of the water, a very rare occurrence.

The Guardian