A Canadian woman, who died when a surfacing whale crashed on to a boat during a snorkelling tour in Mexico, was reportedly on holiday with her family.
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The 35-year-old woman, identified in Canadian media as Jennifer Karren from Calgary, died in hospital after the freak accident, which occurred near the popular beach resort of Cabo San Lucas about 11am on Wednesday.
The Attorney General's Office for Environmental Protection in Mexico said that two other tourists suffered "considerable" injuries.
The office said the small inflatable vessel, which was close to the shore, had been carrying nine tourists.
CBC News reported that Ms Karren was on holiday in Cabo San Lucas with her husband and parents.
Felipe Diez-Canedo, the chief executive of the tour company, Cabo Adventures, told Mexican newspaper Excelsior that the captain of the boat, José Salazar Tendis, had steered to try to avoid hitting the whale as it breached directly in front of him.
"The whale hit one side of the boat, leaving two people injured and another passenger hurt who, unfortunately, later died in hospital," he said.
The Baja California Sur state prosecutor's office said the collision threw the woman into the water. A crew member and a passenger lifted her back on to the vessel and Mexican navy personnel moved her to shore. She was taken to One World Hospital, where she died during treatment.
Prosecutors' spokesman Sergio Villarreal said the woman died from head trauma. He said it was the first death in this type of accident he knew of.
One of the other passengers, a 45-year-old woman, was also admitted to One World Hospital. She was in a stable condition and was being taken to another hospital for treatment, a hospital employee told CBC News.
The condition of the other injured passenger was not clear.
Canadian consular officials in Cabo San Lucas were providing assistance to the woman's family, Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Diana Khaddaj told CBC News.
"Our thoughts are with the family and friends of a Canadian citizen who passed away in Mexico," she said.
Whales breed in coastal lagoons in Mexico in winter, and collisions between whales and boats are not unknown in the country.
In January last year, a boat and a humpback whale collided off the coast of Baja California, injuring a US tourist and three others on board.
While officials identified the animal as a grey whale, Jorge Urban, a professor of biology at the Baja California State University who specialises in whales, said it was almost certainly a humpback whale.
Professor Urban said such accidents "are not common. Sometimes a ship will hit a whale, but we only learn about it from the scars on them [the whales].
"This is the first time in 30 years of studying whales that I have heard about an accident like this ... in which passengers are pitched into the sea, and one dies," he said.
Fairfax Media with AP
