WAILUKU, MAUI — Wailea firefighter Sandy Parker, 27, was alone in his 18-foot fishing boat yesterday when a whale surfaced directly in front of and broadside to him.

Parker doesn't clearly recall what happened next. He was knocked unconscious by the impact, suffering deep gashes to his head, multiple abrasions, and chest and hip pain. Doctors told him he has a mild concussion.

He said he believes he tried to turn the boat away from the whale's head and may have hit it near the tail. He thinks he must have pulled back the throttle, because when he regained consciousness, the boat was motoring at slow speed, in reverse. He doesnât know how long he was out. The whale was no longer present.

"I think the whale is fine," he said.

Parker wasn't.

He thinks he was going about 18 knots, motoring from East Moloka'i to Kahului shortly after noon. He had just passed Kahakuloa on West Maui and was in about 100 feet of water.

He said he had seen whales in the channel between Maui and Moloka'i, but had seen none in the immediate area of the impact. The whale surfaced broadside to him only about 20 feet away and he could not avoid hitting it.

Parker said he believes he was smashed into his boat’s console, and his head hit the dashboard, causing a deep gash above his left eye. He was then thrown sideways, falling onto the boat’s gunwale and then onto the floor.

He thinks the boat may have been knocked on its side. His radio antenna was snapped in three places, and a fishing pole was damaged, perhaps when he was thrown onto it. His cell phone was launched off the boat. He came to and found bits of black, tar-like material sticking to his back and side, and visible on his boat.

"I don't know what it is. Maybe whale skin," he said. He said he does not know how it got onto him — but that perhaps his body made contact with the whale during the collision.

Parker said that he wrapped a towel around his bleeding head. At first he could not see at all, but as his vision cleared, he steered the boat toward Kahului — the nearest port. His eyesight was still not back to normal, and he was unable to pick out the channel markers, he said. But before the impact, he had called friends to meet him at the Kahului Harbor, and they helped him.

He was taken by ambulance to Maui Memorial Medical Center, where physicians put in 20 stitches and 12 staples to close his head wound.

The accident comes less than two weeks after a 3-year-old boy died after an impact between a humpback whale and a whale-watching boat off O'ahu.

Naomi McIntosh, manager of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, said she was shocked when she heard about yesterday's incident.