Have You Seen This? Blue whale interrupts live interview

(BBC/YouTube)


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MOSS LANDING, Calif. — As you probably know from Have You Seen This? articles in the past, live TV is a risky business. You just never know if someone or something will crop up to interrupt.

It may be a loose rope, an apparently precocious child or even a G-rated wardrobe malfunction. In this nature reporter's case, it was a rare sight in the sea that made him cut his live interview short to gush about a blue whale spotted nearby.

Steve Bachshall was in Moss Landing, California — about 20 miles north of Monterey — interviewing a woman who has been working in the area for 35 years. They were supposed to be talking about the remarkable year it's been for whale watching, but Bachshall only gets about 20 seconds in when he yells with excitement, cutting the interview short.

What was the big to-do? A massive blue whale was spotted by a helicopter nearby, making this the first time a blue whale was broadcast live on television.

Bachshall's excitement is infectious, and you can't help feel his joy and hang on his every word as he talks about the blue whale, the biggest mammal to have ever lived on Earth, which was almost hunted to extinction. Recent programs have helped the whales make a comeback.

Oh my. The ocean just delivered her very best. A big blue whale live on air #BigBlueLive - not a dry eye in the OB truck. Sniff. — BBC Oceans (@OceanHQ) August 30, 2015

"When I started off filming wildlife just 16 years ago, if someone had said, 'Go and film a blue whale,' I would've said they were crazy," Bachshall said in the video.

It was such an incredible event for those involved in the shoot that BBC Oceans admitted on Twitter that there wasn't a "dry eye in the OB truck."

As Bachshall says in the video, "This is something that every single person out there should look at and take notice of."

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