Photo: CTV

A whale-watching tour boat came to the rescue of a flipped kayaker in the ocean off suburban Victoria Monday evening.

Colwood resident Frank Hanaka, 76, was a kilometre from shore in Esquimalt Lagoon, tending to his crab traps when his kayak overturned.

Outriggers fell off the kayak, and he went into the water.

Hanaka was wearing a lifejacket, and his yells for help were heard on shore. But a passing tour boat reached him first and plucked him from the water before authorities arrived and retrieved the kayak.

"People had heard him begging for help, crying out," Rod King of Eagle Wing Tours told CTV.

Hanaka was cold but unhurt in the incident and thanked his rescuers for saving him.

– with files from CTV Vancouver Island