A humpback whale briefly swallowed a man in Cape Cod last week before spitting him back out into the ocean. Hmmm…feel like we’ve heard this story before.
Michael Packard was diving for lobster off the Cape Cod coast on Friday, when his fishing partner Josiah Mayo noticed he couldn’t see the bubbles from Packard’s breathing gear floating to the surface anymore. Suddenly, a “burly fish” broke through the surface, thrashing in the water. Mayo quickly realized it was a humpback whale.
“It was a relief because it wasn’t a shark, which meant Michael would be all done at that point,” Mayo told The Washington Post.
After a few more moments passed, Packard eventually flew out of the water before landing back in the ocean. Mayo sped to Packard and rescued him before the whale could get him again.
“I was inside it,” Packard said to Mayo. “I was inside its mouth. It tried to eat me.”
Packard recalled the moment when everything happened. He was close to the ocean floor when he “felt this truck hit me and everything just went dark.”
“I could feel… hard stuff all around me,” Packard said. “I just thought, ‘Did I just get eaten by a white shark?’ And then I said, “No, I don’t feel any teeth.’ And I said, ‘Oh my God, I’m in the mouth of a whale. With his mouth shut.”
Packard believes he was only in the mouth for less than a minute (way less than three days) before he resurfaced. The whale spit him out and continued on its way.
“I just got thrown out of his mouth, into the water — there was white water everywhere,” he said. “And I just was lying on the surface floating and saw his tail and he went back down. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, I got out of that. I survived.’”
In an even greater miraculous twist, he only had some minor bruising and a dislocated knee. He was released later that day, and is looking forward to diving again very soon.
