On June 11, commercial lobster diver Michael Packàrd was nearly swallowed whole by a humpback whale off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts, reports Doug Fraser for the
Cape Cod Times. The encounter only lasted about 30 seconds before the whale resurfaced and belched out Packàrd. Once back into the water, Packàrd's crewmates pulled him to safety and immediately transported him to Cape Cod Hospital, reports Rachel Treisman for
NPR. Except for serious bruising and a dislocated knee, Packàrd escaped virtually unscathed.
The once-in-a-lifetime encounter occurred while Packàrd was about 45 feet deep into the water searching for lobsters. Then, he felt a huge push, almost like a "truck hit me and everything just went dark,” he said in an interview with
WBTS. Packàrd initially thought a great white shark had attacked him, the
Cape Cod Times reports.
"Then I felt around, and I realized there was no teeth, and I had felt, really, no great pain," recounted Packàrd to
WBZ-TV News. "And then I realized, 'Oh my God, I'm in a whale's mouth. I'm in a whale's mouth, and he's trying to swallow me."
While inside the whale, Packàrd—with his scuba gear and breathing apparatus still on—began to move around to try and escape. By Packàrd's estimate, about 30 to 40 seconds passed before the whale began to move its head from side to side.
“I’m like, 'This is how you’re gonna go, Michael. This is how you’re going to die. In the mouth of a whale,'” he tells the
Washington Post's Jaclyn Peiser.
Then, it resurfaced.
“I just got thrown out of his mouth, into the water — there was white water everywhere,” Packàrd tells the
Post. “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.’”
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