Trapped in a whale: the terrifying story of a fisherman miraculously rescued in the United States

A fisherman was looking for lobsters off the coast of the Cape Cod Peninsula in Massachusetts, United States, when an encounter with a whale nearly claimed his life. With his scuba gear, he was 13 meters deep when suddenly he felt a “big blow” which plunged him into darkness.

First Michael packard He didn’t understand what had happened to him and assumed that a white shark had attacked him, but when he looked around he saw no teeth. Completely confused, the revelation of where he was was made present: it was the mouth of a whale trying to swallow it.

Fear and panic gripped the 56-year-old and he predicted the worst: “I thought that was it myself. Finally, he was going to die. I thought of my children and my wife. There really was no way out of it. “

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Packard was aware throughout the terrifying scene and to him it represented the worst thing that could happen to him because I knew I would be alive to have a very scary ending. The diver was breathing heavily with his respirator in his mouth.

“One of the things that went through my mind was, ‘I’m breathing air and I’m going to be in this whale’s mouth while breathing air.’ Crazy, ”recalled the fisherman in an interview with the WBZ channel.

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About 30 to 40 seconds had already passed since the start of the terrifying scene when, caught in the jaws of the enormous 27-ton beast, Packard felt that some sort of divine intervention occurred: “Suddenly the whale came to the surface and exploded and started shaking its head when I fell into the water.”

The lucky fisherman was floating on the water for a while when his boat mate and another fisherman who was in the area came to rescue him. Packard couldn’t believe he had been saved because at all times he thought he was doomed. “I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I was out of itThe diver told local media.

The encounter between humans and whales is not common, and the creature likely mistook Packard for another animal. Whales can swallow around 600 cubic meters of water per hour, feeding primarily on plankton. According to Jooke Robbins, director of humpback whale studies at the Center for Coastal Studies, “what happened was a mistake and an accident on the part of the hunchback”.