SAN FRANCISCO—Kayakers in the San Francisco Bay stumbled across four breaching whales in the midst of a feeding frenzy this weekend and the event was captured on video.

Lyrinda Synderman, 68, a retired architect from Berkeley, was with with three members from her kayaking club: Dick Mallory, Holly Smith, and Don Fleming, when they spotted a flock of birds flying close to the water as they rounded Angel Island, and suspected they could potentially see a whale.

The group of friends are frequent visitors to the San Francisco Bay and kayak with the Petaluma Paddlers and Bay Area Sea Kayakers Club.

When Snyderman and friends saw the color of the tide changing and the bird activity near Pier 39, they paddled over to investigate.

They witnessed four to five whales emerged from the depths of the ocean just yards away. The whales surfaced, blew water, dove down, and surfaced again, repeating the process over and over, as seen in the 20-minute video shot by Synderman.

“Oh my God,” Snyderman can be heard shouting in the recording.

The video shows several humpback whales leaping in the air with backdrops of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.

“We saw them on occasion,” Snyderman told ABC station KGO-TV in San Francisco. “Three at once coming up from the bottom like a Polaris missile with their mouths open to capture all the water. We had never seen this behavior before in the bay.”

The latest encounter is just one of the many unusual humpback sightings in the San Francisco Bay this spring and summer; experts say whales are being spotted earlier in the season than usual and coming closer shorelines. Whale experts say the creatures were likely feasting on the abundance of herring in the bay.

The video can be found on ABC7’s website at the following link: http://abc7news.com/society/exclusive-up-close-video-of-whales-feeding-in-sf-bay/1422741/