Whales are pretty spectacular creatures, but usually best kept at something of a length.
After all, they're the largest animals on Earth and generally unconcerned about humans, so they can unwittingly throw their weight around. For this grey whale, however, there are no such problems with people - this one just wants to snug up and make friends. Watch the amazing video here.
The footage was taken by Charles Harmer and Mike Nulty, two marine photographers who were on the boat when the grey whale decided to make friends with a few humans.
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It swims up right to the side of their vessel and allows the people to stroke it on its side, with one even leaning over and seeming to give the mega-mammal a little kiss.
The grey whale is not quite the biggest fish in the sea, but it isn't far off.
They can grow to lengths just shy of 15 metres in length and weighs somewhere in the region of 36 tonnes, which is massive by anyone's standards.
Grey whales live predominantly in the northern Pacific Ocean, along the western coast of North America, though they also possess one of the widest migratory ranges of any animal on Earth and thus can be found across a huge swath of the Pacific Ocean.
They will travel as far as 22,000 kilometres in one migratory cycle and sightings have been recorded in locations as diverse as Namibia, off the coast of Southern Africa in 2013 - the first ever to be sighted in the Southern Hemisphere - and Israel, showing that they have the capability to swim into the Mediterranean Sea.
Grey whales have been hunted by whalers - they only predators are humans and killer whales - although killing them is now broadly illegal.
They once lived in the North Atlantic as well as the Pacific, but were hunted to extinction in the whaling boom of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Humans have also nearly eradicated the species from the eastern Pacific, where Japanese and Korean whalers have reduced their numbers to less than 200.
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There are an estimated 26,000 grey whales on the western side of the Pacific Ocean.
Whaling for grey whales is only allowed in very controlled circumstances and by aboriginal inhabitants of the North American Pacific Coast.
Alaska natives recently caused controversy by killing a grey whale under the impression that it was a Beluga whale, which they are allowed to kill.
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Topics: Whales