A diver from Massachusetts has revealed that he was swallowed by a hungry humpback whale and spent 30 seconds in its mouth, but he lived to tell the tale because the creature didn't like the taste and spat him out, according to the British newspaper "Daily Mail." Diver Michael Packard, 56, stated that he was on a routine dive off Provincetown last Friday when he felt a bump and everything around him turned dark.
According to the "Daily Mail," Michael initially thought he had been attacked by a shark, but when he didn’t feel any sharp teeth or pain, he began to figure out what had happened. Packard recounted, "I realized, oh my God, I'm in the mouth of a whale, and it's trying to swallow me, and I said to myself okay, this is it - I'm finally going to die." He began to think about his wife and his children, aged 12 and 15, and struggled inside the whale's mouth until he saw a light and felt the whale shaking its head side to side.
Packard estimates he spent about 30 seconds inside the whale and was able to keep breathing because he still had his snorkel on. He was rescued by his colleague Josiah Mayo, who was on their boat and pulled him from the water after the whale spat him out, using his radio to contact authorities onshore, according to the Cape Cod Times. Experts say it is extremely rare for a humpback whale to swallow someone, with Peter Corkeron, a senior scientist at New England Aquarium, estimating there is a one in a trillion chance of being eaten by a whale.
Jook Robbins, director of humpback whale studies at the Center for Coastal Studies, stated that when humpbacks feed, "they do what we call bubble feeding, where they open their mouths incredibly wide."
