Home » World » – Oh my God. I’m in the mouth of a whale and he’s trying to swallow me!

– Oh my God. I’m in the mouth of a whale and he’s trying to swallow me!

An American lobster fisherman says he was swallowed by a humpback whale while diving off the coast of the state of Massachusetts on Friday.

Lobster fisherman Michael Packard survived the encounter with the giant whale, and poses here in the hospital bed at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Photo: Shutterstock / Private

– I was in the closed mouth for about 30 to 40 seconds before he rose to the surface and spat me out, says Michael Packard himself on Facebook.

The man was hospitalized, but escaped the incident with bruises and minor injuries. Probably just a knee out of joint, according to BBC.

He must have been about ten meters below the water surface when it happened. To the local newspaper Cape Cod Times he says that he suddenly felt a violent push before everything turned black.

This is how a local NBC journalist in Boston describes what happened on Twitter:

First thought it was shark

Packard initially thought he had been attacked by a shark, but quickly discovered that there were no sharp teeth and no wounds.

He struggled for a while before he began to see light.

Then it dawned on him that he was in the mouth of a whale.

I thought: Oh my God – I’m in a whale’s mouth and he’s trying to swallow me! tells Packard CNN/ WBZ.

Packard says he had the oxygen bottles on his back inside the whale’s mouth.

—-

It was a whale of this type, a humpback whale, which is said to have swallowed and spat out the American fisherman. This whale was photographed outside Puerto Lopez, Ecuador. Photo: Shutterstock

– I thought: Now I’m going to die.

– The thought went through my head: I breathe. Should I continue to breathe here inside the whale’s mouth until I run out of air?

Then he said to himself, “OK. That was it. Now I’m going to die.

– I thought of my wife and children, he says. – There was no way I could get out.

The whale began throwing its head back and forth before suddenly spitting out, according to Packard.

Packard was thrown into the air and landed in the water.

– I was free and just lay there and floated, he says.

His friend Josiah Mayo was with Packard on the fishing trip. He is said to have witnessed an “explosion of water” when the whale rose to the surface.

Unable to eat people

Humpback whales have large mouths, but the pharynx is too narrow to eat a human, according to Jooke Robbins, a researcher on whales at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

She has never heard of similar stories before, but says she has no reason to doubt the story, partly because she knows those involved.

The diver has probably only been in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to Robbins. It is not certain that the whale discovered that something else was also in the way.

– When they fish, they come at great speed, open their mouths and swallow the fish and water very quickly, she says to the news agency AFP.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.