Whale shocks volleyball team visiting Fenwick Island

The two women joked it could be Jack Sparrow. 

For Salisbury resident Michele Miller, the scene Tuesday evening on the beach in Fenwick Island was "odd" — the water was fairly calm but big waves kept rolling in and a fog thickened above the ocean. 

She stood at the beach's edge, watching dolphins swimming among flapping fish — feeding time.

Tanya Ehlers stood with her, and said, "I feel like there's something coming out of the water."

Miller took out her phone, and the moment she hit record, a fin cut through the water.

"And it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger," she said. 

It was not Jack Sparrow. It was not a dolphin.

"I felt like I just saw a superstar," Ehlers said. "If we were standing in the water, we could have touched it."

Ehlers screamed, "It's a whale!" And as evidenced by the shaky camerawork, grabbed Miller's arm in complete just-spotted-a-marine-giant excitement.

The ocean shelf was deep enough to accommodate the whale about 25 feet from the shoreline, and in Miller's video, the creature can be seen rising from the waters on its side, its tale flipping above the surface.

Miller, a Salisbury resident, almost didn't make it to Fenwick Island that day. She usually drives her daughter Abby down twice a week for practice with Dynamic Volleyball Academy. Abby had a lot of homework that day, but they decided a mental break would be nice.

Abby was further from the shoreline when she turned around and saw the whale. Her fellow volleyball players thought it was a dolphin at first.

"Uh, no, that’s a whale," she said. Cue everyone running down the beach to get a closer look.

Beyond cell phone video quality, Miller and Ehlers, the director of Dynamic Volleyball Academy, said they could see barnacles and stripes under its chin, possibly indicative of a humpback whale. 

For Ehlers, who grew up in Ocean City, other than seeing whales at Sea World, this was the first time she saw one in its natural habitat. And Miller, who said she has traveled the world, never saw a whale with her naked eye until Tuesday evening. 

After taking the video, the whale circled back but was farther in the water, unfazed by the group of wonderstruck volleyball players and most likely unaware of the awe it had just unfurled.

"It was such an experience," Miller said. "We all went away with a little high from it."