<p>Sam Matheson, 14, said he was with a friend at Middleton Beach in Albany south of Perth, when he saw the animal not far off the Western Australian coast and decided to take a closer look.<br /><br />"I swam out to it and put my arms on it, sort of laid against it for about 20 or 30 seconds. I was out of the water from the waist up," the keen surfer told Perth's Sunday Times.<br /><br />"It was like a leather texture, like a really smooth leather, really soft. It wasn't even scary, it was like, 'Dude, it's a whale'." The teen said the whale, which he estimated to be about 14 metres (46 feet) long, did not even notice him until he laid on it.<br /><br />"Then it lifted up its tail, it went under and it pulled me down at bit, but I was fine and I swam back to the rocks," he said. Matheson said he did not realise that it was illegal or dangerous to swim within 30 metres of a whale and that he now regretted his actions.<br /><br />"If I had known it was illegal I wouldn't have done it," he told the paper. The story of the teen whale rider made headlines after a witness photographed the boy clambering on the southern right whale, prompting officials to warn the public that doing so was illegal and potentially fatal.<br /><br />They said the teenager was lucky to have escaped injury and the incident could easily have ended tragically had he been in the way of a tail slap or breaching action. Matheson was let off with a warning but harassing protected species carries a maximum fine of 10,000 dollars (9,890 US dollars) under environmental laws.</p>
<p>Sam Matheson, 14, said he was with a friend at Middleton Beach in Albany south of Perth, when he saw the animal not far off the Western Australian coast and decided to take a closer look.<br /><br />"I swam out to it and put my arms on it, sort of laid against it for about 20 or 30 seconds. I was out of the water from the waist up," the keen surfer told Perth's Sunday Times.<br /><br />"It was like a leather texture, like a really smooth leather, really soft. It wasn't even scary, it was like, 'Dude, it's a whale'." The teen said the whale, which he estimated to be about 14 metres (46 feet) long, did not even notice him until he laid on it.<br /><br />"Then it lifted up its tail, it went under and it pulled me down at bit, but I was fine and I swam back to the rocks," he said. Matheson said he did not realise that it was illegal or dangerous to swim within 30 metres of a whale and that he now regretted his actions.<br /><br />"If I had known it was illegal I wouldn't have done it," he told the paper. The story of the teen whale rider made headlines after a witness photographed the boy clambering on the southern right whale, prompting officials to warn the public that doing so was illegal and potentially fatal.<br /><br />They said the teenager was lucky to have escaped injury and the incident could easily have ended tragically had he been in the way of a tail slap or breaching action. Matheson was let off with a warning but harassing protected species carries a maximum fine of 10,000 dollars (9,890 US dollars) under environmental laws.</p>