‘It looks like it will catch us’: Russian fishermen film stunning waterspout (and it did catch them)

They got their viral video, but maybe these Russian fishermen should have moved away a bit faster.

“A whirlwind. A Twister. 500 meters from us. Very beautiful. It’s huge,” said Pavel Chernyavsky, as he narrates his Instagram video, geolocated off the coast of Gelendzhik in the Black Sea.

“Maybe it will catch up with us,” he joked in the next sentence, though the slightest note of genuine concern could be heard in his voice. He then points to a second twister, noting that the other column of wind-spun water is black, not white like the first one.

So a video of beautiful natural phenomenon just on the edge of danger was uploaded, and it was immediately picked up by the local media.

READ MORE: Rare 25,000ft ‘firenado’ captured in epic footage (VIDEO)

But the story didn’t end there – whether it was because people who think they are about to die don’t always film themselves, or perhaps the language behind the camera was not suitable for public display.

In a video on his account posted a day later, on Tuesday, Chernyavsky stands on the outside of his moored ship, which is scratched and covered in black marks.

“I want to show you the end result of the tornado,” he said to the camera, with a smile, but evidently still a little shaken. “As the storm broke out, we tried to tether ourselves to a larger ship, but the ropes broke apart, and we had to unmoor from them and we collided.”

“It was a miracle that we survived.”