MOBY LICK
A DIVER has told how he feared he would be killed after he was swallowed by a whale.
Michael Packard was fishing for lobster in the sea off Cape Cod in Massachusetts when he had the biblical encounter with the humpback whale.
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The dad-of-two had gone into the sea for his second dive of the day to pluck lobsters from the ocean floor when 10ft from the bottom he was hit by what he said felt like a 100-tonne truck.
“All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” Michael told the Cape Cod Times.
“I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth.”
At first, he thought he was inside a great white shark but he couldn’t feel any teeth and hadn’t suffered any obvious wounds.
Then it quickly dawned on him that he had been swallowed by a whale during the 2021 encounter.
“I was completely inside it was completely black,” Michael said.
“I thought to myself, ‘there’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.’ All I could think of was my boys — they’re 12 and 15 years old.”
Michael had to feel around in the darkness while inside the whale’s mouth.
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The whale began shaking its head so Packard could tell the creature didn’t like having him in his mouth.
He estimated he was inside the whale for 30 to 40 seconds before it finally surfaced.
“I saw light, and he started throwing his head side to side, and the next thing I knew I was outside,” Michael added.
“I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I got out of that.”
His crewmate, who had been desperately scanning the water for telltale bubbles from Michael’s oxygen respirator, hauled him back into the boat.
Appearing on the Jimmy Kimmel show, Michael joked: "I want to apologise to the whale for getting in his way.
"And I won't ever do it again."
Humpback whales can grow to as long as 50ft and weigh about 36 tonnes.
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They tend to feed by opening their mouth wide to gulp down as much prey, like fish or krill, as possible.
“Based on what was described, this would have to be a mistake and an accident on the part of the humpback," said Jooke Robbins, director of Humpback Whale Studies at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.
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