Watch terrifying moment a small boat is surrounded by three killer whales at sea

This is the terrifying moment three killer whales circled a pair of Russian kayakers who had paddled half a mile out to sea.

Two kayakers immediately stop paddling in the calm waters as they spot the huge orcas swimming towards them.

The nail-biting 40-second saga took place off Cape Mramorniy, on Sakhalin, an island that is almost as big as Scotland.

'It's looking at me', one of the shaken kayakers says as the whales swim ominously underneath, seemingly planning their attack.


Suddenly one of the predators bursts its black head above water and lurches towards the man in the red kayak.

'F***! Oh wow f***'!' the men can be heard shouting.

The whales then swirl underneath for another few seconds before darting away, leaving the pair laughing nervously at their close encounter with the giant mammals.

'Okay, so that's the end of our communication,' one of the relieved kayakers says.

Alexandr Yemchenko, one of the men in the video, turns the video on himself and his companion and says: 'Killer whales, friends, these were real killer whales.'

'They looked at the men, and the men looked at them,' one local media outlet reported.

Killer whales can grow up to eight metres in length and reach weights of nearly 5,500kg.

There are around 50,000 killer whales globally, and they are most commonly found in the Pacific Northwest - where this incident took place - as well as along northern Norway's coast and on higher latitudes in the Southern Ocean.