He was swallowed and then spit out by a humpback whale, but he lived to tell this extraordinary story.
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Michael Packard, a commercial lobster diver, was working when he was suddenly swallowed and spit out by a huge humpback whale and lived to tell this simply frightening and extraordinary story.
Packard’s adventure took place off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA, in 2021. At the time, the diver shared his story in a Facebook post.
“I just want to clarify what happened to me today. I was diving for lobsters and a humpback whale tried to eat me,” he wrote; “I was in her closed mouth for about 30 to 40 seconds before she rose to the surface and spat me out. I’m really hurt, but I don’t have any broken bones.”
After recovering from his injuries, Packard went into more detail about what happened in an interview with NBC Boston: “I just felt this truck hit me,” he said, “and everything just went black… I just thought, ‘I just got hit. eaten by a great white shark?’ And then I said, ‘No, I don’t feel any teeth. ‘Oh my God, I’m in the mouth of a whale. With your mouth closed.’”
Fortunately, the whale spat Packard out after a long 30 or 40 seconds: “I was just thrown out of its mouth into the water. There was white water everywhere. And I was lying on the surface, floating.”
The adventure that Packard went through was so incredible that it ended up becoming a documentary, “In the Whale”, by director and producer David Abel. In an interesting moment in the production, we hear part of the rescue call made by the diver’s partner who frantically reports that his friend injured his leg, trying to describe how it all happened: “It’s a long story,” he says in the recording.
This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
