Professional lobster diver, Michael Packard, lives to tell the tale of escaping death after being trapped in the mouth of a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
The 56-year-old Packard estimates that he was in the whale’s mouth for about 30 seconds, but continued to breathe because he still had his breathing apparatus in, The Guardian reports.
According to Metro, Packard first thought that he had been attacked by a shark.
“All of a sudden, I just felt this huge bump, and everything went dark,” he told WBZ-TV. “And I could sense that I was moving.
“Then I realized, oh my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth… and he’s trying to swallow me.
“And I thought to myself OK, this is it – I’m finally – I’m gonna die,” he adds.
After enduring the horrific 30 seconds, the whale surfaced, shook its head, and spat him out. Packard was rescued by his crewmate in the surface boat, and was released from Cape Cod hospital on Friday morning, only having suffered from bruising.
“I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water.
“I was free and I just floated there. I couldn’t believe it… I’m here to tell it,” he says.
In a Facebook post, Packard wrote: “I am very bruised but have no broken bones,” and went on to “thank the Provincetown rescue team.”
Peter Corkeron, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium, estimated that there is a one in a trillion chance of someone being eaten by a whale, Metro reports.
Picture: Unsplash / Supplied