A surfer in Australia got more than he bargained for while out enjoying the waves on Sunday. Bishan Rajapaske was struck by a whale while along Bondi Beach in Sydney.

The 38-year-old doctor was instantly knocked unconscious. Floating face-down, he almost drowned before friends found him and took him to nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital.

Rajapaske told Sky News that he was “mesmerized” by the whale and wanted to talk “to it like you’d talk to a nice dog or something.”

“I said, ‘Oh hello, how’s it going?’ At that point I thought, ‘Let’s just take a chance and see how it goes.’ I was like a stunned mullet.”

Instead of a friendly response from the whale, he got a injured shoulder and a concussion.

The scary incident was caught on video.

The whale is thought to be of the Southern Right variety, which can weight up to 80 tons.

One of the lifeguards at the beach says that they tried to keep people away once they spotted the whale.

“We sent our lifeguard to make a big radius around the whale to get everyone away,” Adrian Kovacic told Sky News Australia, “and while he was doing that one guy got too close and got hit by the tail.”

That Sky News Australia report also quoted bystanders as comparing the whale to “the size of a bus,” and saying “it was 40 feet long.” It also said that “the whale was frolicking with them and having a lot of fun” until “the next thing, you know, a surfboard is flying in the air.”

The Australian National Parks and Wildlife Amendment (Marine Mammals) Regulation 2006 says that swimmers and surfers should stay back at least 30 meters from a whale. Rajapakse, however, got less than a meter from the whale to say his ill-advised hello.

The doctor now says his story is “a good cautionary tale” to warn people off and keep their distance, lest they fall prey to the same mistaken assumption of safety that he did.

About two hours after the incident, the whale was escorted from the area by police vehicles.