Watch: A humpback whale nudged this diver out of harm’s way to save her from a nearby shark

Diver Nan Hauser, a biologist who was swimming underwater, encountered a 50,000-pound humpback whale, but couldn’t understand why it was behaving oddly (video above).

The whale came close to her and kept nudging her in a particular direction with its mouth. She was terrified, “as anyone would be”, she told The Dodo in the video below. The whale started to toss her over its fin and kept pushing her.

Eventually she bobbed out of the water, and realised a shark had been swirling around her and the whale. It took her a few minutes to realise that the whale was only saving her life. “I was just laughing, but it was a sort of nervous laugh. Like, ‘I lived through this.’”