Liam Lawless saw a giant white object moving right next to him as he sat on his surfboard in the water at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point waiting for waves.
“All I know is it was big, and it was coming right for me,” the 11-year-old from San Diego said Thursday, Nov. 14, before paddling out at the same beach for a surf session.
The startling moment, Monday, Nov. 11, has been seen around the world in a video that went viral this week after Capo Beach teen Payton Landaas captured footage of the 18-foot young gray whale swimming next to surfers, most of whom didn’t notice it swimming stealthily next to them.
In the video, Lawless seems to be the only one who takes notice of the creature. He quickly pulls his legs up and begins frantically paddling away.
“I saw the tail and I was like ‘shark,’” he said. “That’s when I got on my board and started paddling as fast as I could.”
Lawless warned his dad before paddling to shore. “Dad, shark!” Michael Lawless recalled his son calling out.
But then, no one said another word. Nothing about a shark or whale, no chatter in the line-up about something lurking nearby.
On the video, one other surfer seems to look at the whale, but doesn’t even flinch.
“If it’s a whale, you’re going to scream. Even if it’s a dolphin, or seal … no one said a word, which was the weirdest thing,” Michael Lawless said.
When father and son returned home to San Diego after their camping trip to Doheny, Michael said, he wondered if Liam did see something and if the drone above was actually filming a shark below. He searched online to see if anything popped up, but with no luck.
He forgot about it until Wednesday night, when his wife shouted out to them.
“No way, look at this!” she called out at the sight of a news article about the whale near the surfers, recognizing her son as the surfer who spotted it and paddled away.
Many of the online video viewers gave Liam Lawless, who turns 12 next week, props for his quick reflexes.
“Liam you were the smart one, it appears as if no one else even noticed,” one person wrote.
In the past few days, Landaas, a senior at San Juan Hills High School, has been fielding countless inquiries from media outlets as far away as the United Kingdom. His video has been shown on surf websites and splashed on television around the world.
“It’s been insane, crazy. I didn’t realize it would go this far, but it’s still going,” Landaas, 18, said. “Most of my mom’s friends are emailing and messaging, all our relatives from Georgia and New York. It’s all over the place.”
The video had been viewed about 150,000 times on YouTube as of Friday morning. Additional video footage was posted directly on Facebook.
Landaas, who recently started a drone video company called Stealth Photos, licensed the video in hopes of making some money if people want it for commercial use or broadcast.
“Honestly, it doesn’t feel real yet,” he said. “I keep pinching myself.”
It’s not unheard of for gray whales to come close to shore during their annual migration as they make their way down to Baja to breed, either out of curiosity or to rub their bodies on the sand to remove parasites that can be itchy on their skin.
Dana Wharf Whale Watching boat captain Frank Brennan said he believes the whale was just navigating the coast and took a wrong turn.
“I’ve seen them do that in the harbor, too,” he said. “I’ve seen them travel up the coast in super shallow — in 15 feet of water … a lot of times they do travel really close like that.”
Some of the viewers captivated with the video are envious of the experience.
“You hit the nature lottery,” one viewer wrote.
