Price Williams has spent most of his life on the waters around Marblehead. But nothing in nearly three decades of boating prepared him for what happened Thursday about six miles off Marblehead.
Williams was out on the water with his mother and his golden retriever, Dash, when three humpback whales appeared.
And then they stuck around.
For about 90 minutes, Williams said, the whales repeatedly approached his stopped boat, swimming alongside it, passing underneath it and sometimes popping up close enough to seemingly get a good look at their human — and canine — visitors.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Williams told the Current.
He has seen whales jumping and splashing in the distance, he said, but this was different.
“This was a deliberate, focused curiosity type of deal,” Williams said.
He kept his boat in neutral as the whales came and went. Williams said they would swim off, only to return again.
“They would come up, check us out, they would play. Very deliberate, very gentle.” The largest of the three was longer than the 33-foot boat.
One member of Williams’ crew seemed particularly captivated: Dash.
Williams said his golden retriever will normally bark when something unusual catches his attention. Not this time.
“He wasn’t barking at all,” Williams said.
Williams wonders whether Dash may have been part of the whales’ fascination with the boat. Afterward, he did some Googling and found accounts suggesting humpbacks can show curiosity toward dogs.
“I believe that it’s connected,” he said. “I think it’s intertwined.”
For Williams, what made the encounter especially remarkable was his familiarity with the ocean.
He has lived in Marblehead since he was 7 and grew up next to Pleon Yacht Club, with the harbor essentially in his backyard. He got his boating license at 13 and, now 42, has been a licensed boater for 29 years.
“My whole childhood is the harbor, the ocean,” Williams said. “I’ve been boating my whole life.”
He has seen plenty out there.
Just never anything quite like Thursday.
“I know this was exceptional,” Williams said.
