A man who couldn’t take his eyes off of his cellphone missed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a hump-back whale two feet away from him.

A sign of the times.

A photo posted by E. Smith (@esmith_images) on


Photographer Eric Smith captured a photo of the oblivious man next to the whale while photographing a mom and her calf on Redondo Beach several weeks ago. “A mom was out there with her calf, flapping, breaching, jumping, mouths eating fish — it was fantastic,” Smith told CBS News. And then there was this man, “he never moved from his phone.”

Smith noted that a small private sailboat maneuvered really close to the whales; and that the gentleman in the picture was literally sitting in that position and never moved.

To be fair, we don’t know what the man was doing on his cellphone. He could have been texting his wife who had just gone into labour or learned via Facebook that an old friend had passed away. Or, he could have been playing Candy Crush or trying out Trivia Crack.

Maybe he should think about investing in a NoPhone.