Recently, veteran lobster diver Michael Packard went into the waters at Cape Cod for his second dive that day.
His vessel, the ‘Ja’n J’ was off the Herring Cove Beach, surrounded by a fleet of boats catching striped bass.
The licensed lobster divers pluck lobsters off the sandy bottom and when Packard who’s 56 dove deep down, he saw schools of sand lances and stripers.
And, believe it or not, Packard was swallowed whole by a humpback whale soon after. Around 10 feet from the bottom, the veteran knew how felt to be a part of the ocean food chain.
Everything Was Completely Black, Says Packard
Packard explained that all of a sudden, he felt a major shove and then, things went black. The good news is that he’s okay now and was released from the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis.
He explained he could feel the whale was moving and he felt it squeezing with the mouth muscles.
At first, Packard believed he was inside the mouth of a great white shark, but he felt no teeth and he had no wounds. So, it soon clicked to him that he was swallowed by a whale.
He panicked, thinking there’s no way he would get out of the whale’s mouth and thought this was his end. He says that all he could think about were his children, two boys, one age twelve and the other age 15.
According to Packard, he was inside the whale some 30 to 40 seconds before it surfaced. This is when Packard saw light and started to throw his head side to side.
The next time he knew, he was outside of its mouth and in the water.
Josiah Mayo, the crewman, said that there was all this action at the top of the water. The whale flung Packard back into the sea. Mayo picked him and called the radio to shore and went fast to Provincetown pier.
The Fire Department ambulance took him to the hospital. They’re thankful it wasn’t a white shark because he sees them all of the time.
Are Humpback Whales Dangerous to Humans?
According to director of Humpback Whale Studies at the Center for Coastal Studies in Prince town, this would be a mistake and an accident by the humpback.
These whales aren’t aggressive, especially towards humans. Since Mayo described the whale as medium-sized, Robbins suspects this was a juvenile feeding on sand lance.
And, when it opened its mouth to eat, it billows out like a parachute and its forward vision is blocked.
Consequently, many get entangled in fishing gear in their jaws and mouth. However, incidents of humpbacks injuring divers and swimmers are very rare.
Their esophagus is too small to actually be able to swallow a human, but they could wrap their mouth around a big object and spit it out.
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