Posted on 06/11/2021 3:07:56 PM PDT by billorites
A Cape Cod fisherman is recovering after miraculously emerging without serious injuries from spending nearly a minute in the maw of a humpback whale who mistook him for a snack.
“I was lobster diving and a humpback whale tried to eat me,” fisherman Packard wrote on Facebook.
This salty tale begins innocuously, with the 56-year-old sea captain Packard on Friday morning looking for lobsters near Provincetown, where he’s from. He dove into the ocean to check a trap — when a passing whale gulped him down.
“He was in a whale’s mouth for 30 to 40 seconds, and then he was spit out,” his mother, local painter Anne Packard, told the Herald on Friday afternoon.
Michael Packard, on his way out from the hospital just a few hours later, told a local TV reporter he thought that was it for him.
“I realized I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to swallow me,” a shaken-sounding Packard told WBZ. “I thought to myself, ‘Hey, this is it. I’m going to die.'”
But happily, his physical recovery seems to be going swimmingly. Medical personnel had suspected he’d broken at least one of his legs, but it appears he escaped even that, his mother said.
“He doesn’t have any broken bones,” she said. “He’s terribly fortunate.”
She said she’d just talked to him on the phone, and they didn’t get too far into what it’s like in a whale’s mouth.
But she did say, “He said he knew it was the end — he absolutely accepted it.”
Humpback don’t actually eat people. Experts say this kind of behavior is essentially unheard of, and likely is just a freak incident — a fluke, if you will. There’s a pretty good chance no one outside of Nineveh-bound biblical figures can match Packard’s story.
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(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
Is anybody here a marine biologist?
...and "catch and release"...
Somebody here knows his plaice.
;)
Was it a white humpback, and spit him out because he didn’t taste like Ahab?
That some fish story.
Good grief...My daughter’s place is close by.
that’s a good one...
I’ll take the L guys.
I’m surprised at all y’all - you missed the obvious.
Tasted like chicken?
Jonah said “hold my beer”.
Arrghh. It’s a very exclusive club, those who survive the belly of the beast.
New name: Jonah Packard
Call me Ishmael.
Depending on the water clarity, a whale might well mistake a diver for a small pod of Mossbunker (Menhaden) or a small school of Herring. More filling than Krill!
I don't think the whale's throat could handle a human, so he'd not reach the stomach. And he was released in about 40 seconds.
Not everybody believes his story...
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