EIGHT-TIME world pad­dle­board­ing cham­pion Jamie Mitchell had the sur­prise of his life when a hump­back whale sur­faced cen­time­tres away from him off  the New South Wales north coast yesterday.

Mitchell told news.com.au he was out film­ing a pilot for his com­ing doc­u­men­tary, Liv­ing in Liq­uid, when a pod of up to five hump­backs sur­faced, and started fol­low­ing him off Tweed Heads at about 7.30am (AEST).

He said the pod played around him for about 10 min­utes.

“We were just out on the water pad­dling around and all of a sud­den, boom, a whale breached about 100m away from me,” he said today.

“I thought that was pretty cool and then all of a sud­den another whale came up right in front of me.

“At the start it was sort of scary, I got goose­bumps and the adren­a­lin started flowing.

“But then I real­ized that they were just play­ing. They swam right under­neath my board and I thought I’d be in strife if they came up but they had a good sense of where I was.”

The 32-year-old,  who lives on the Gold Coast and spends most of his time in the water, said the migrat­ing hump­backs drifted off after a while.

“It’s cer­tainly the clos­est I’ve ever been to them,” he said.

Mitchell is soon head­ing to Cal­i­for­nia to com­pete in the Hennessey’s Inter­na­tional Pad­dle­board Race.

Link to story from News.com.au