A dead whale shark, measuring 13 meters in length, lies after it was stranded on the Pandansimo beach in Bantul
A dead whale shark, measuring 13 meters in length, lies after it was stranded on the Pandansimo beach in Bantul, near the city of Yogyakarta August 2, 2012. REUTERS/Dwi Oblo

A photo uploaded on Instagram showed a boater texting on his smartphone while there was a female humpback whale just two feet away from the busy man in Redondo Beach, California. A professional photographer captured the image while he was whale watching.

The photo was captioned "A sign of the times. Hey dude! Stop texting. There's an enormous humpback whale two feet from your boat!" It received more than 440 likes on the social networking site.

Eric Smith, the photographer, told CBS News that a mother humpback was out in the waters with her calf and was seen breaching, jumping and eating fish. He said that the scene was fantastic.

Smith explained that a small sailboat was close to the whales and the man on the private boat was sitting in one position and did not budge. He said that the man never moved from his phone.

Smith said that, as far as he knew, there were chances that the man was texting in the hospital, but Smith thought that it was horrible for the man to miss a wonderful moment that happened at a distance of just 2 feet from him.

Smith captured around 5 photos of the humpback whales. In the background of every picture was the private sailboat. Smith said that in any of the pictures, the man never got off his mobile phone.

Smith acknowledged the fact that he often found himself looking at his phone as his phone's screen glowed. He explained that everyone was guilty of being buried in their phones, which included even him. He said that one thought that life was better on the phone but that resulted in missing what was happening around. He said that it was indicative that humans had serious issues that they had to work through. A survey in the United Kingdom had showed that 13 percent of the participants could not be without checking their phones every hour.

According to UPI, mobile phones distracted its user from wildlife events that happened once-in-a-lifetime. In addition to that, studies have shown that smartphones lead to poor sleep habits of teenagers as well as adults.

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