‘Either he spit me out or he swallowed me’: Lobster diver survives 30 seconds in a whale’s mouth

Michael Packard was 45 feet deep in the waters of Cape Cod Friday morning when, suddenly, “everything went dark.”

At first, he thought he had been bitten by a shark, but feeling no pain, he realized he was alive and breathing inside the mouth of a humpback whale.

“I could sense that I was moving,” he recounted in an exclusive interview with the Boston CBS affiliate. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, did I just get bit by a shark?’ and then I felt around and I realized there was no teeth, and I felt really no great pain, and then I realized — ‘Oh my god, I’m in a whale’s mouth.’”

He paused and repeated, “I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to swallow me.”

Estimating he floated for 30 seconds amid the creature’s hundreds of baleen plates — made from the same organic material, keratin, that forms human hair and nails — he believed in the moment that half-minute would be his last.

His mind raced to his wife and children.

“It was happening so fast,” he told CBS Boston, speaking deliberately and shaking his head in a combination of disbelief and enchantment after leaving the hospital with plenty of bruises. “My only thought was how to get out of that mouth. And I realized there was no overcoming of a beast of that size. He was gonna do with me what he wanted to do: Either he spit me out or he swallowed me.”

Thankfully, his own mouth had held onto his breathing apparatus, adding to the delirium.

“What if he does swallow me?” he recalled in the video interview. “I mean, here I am, I’m breathing air and I’m gonna breathe in this whale’s mouth until my air runs out.”

Then suddenly, the whale glided to the surface and spit him out.

“I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water and I was free,” he said, pausing, “and I just floated there.”

His fishing partner was right there, and with the help of another passerby, they pulled him into the boat and removed his tank.

Humpback whales feed by taking huge gulps, explained Peter Corkeron, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium.

Speaking to CBS Boston, he described it as a “very unusual accident.”

“This is a one in a — goodness knows what — trillion chance,” he said.

In addition to humpback whales, Cape Cod waters are home to other species including minke and North Atlantic rock whales. Any of them could be capable of accidentally swallowing a human, said Corkeron, but “they’re mostly not interested in bothering us, and we can do the same for them.”

He believes Packard’s story.

“I couldn’t believe I got out of that,” said the diver. “And I’m here to tell it.”

Packard held a Q&A on Reddit on Saturday with the help of his son. He answered questions such as “What’s your second craziest diving story?” and “Was the whale’s tongue smooth or scratchy?”

This story was originally published June 12, 2021 at 2:59 PM with the headline "‘Either he spit me out or he swallowed me’: Lobster diver survives 30 seconds in a whale’s mouth."