Off the coast of Provincetown, Mass. on Friday, a humpback whale scooped up a commercial lobster diver and nearly swallowed him. The divers name is not Jonah but rather Michael Packard, 56.
"I was in his closed mouth for about 30 to 40 seconds before he rose to the surface and spit me out," Packard posted on Facebook. "I am very bruised up but have no broken bones."
From NPR:
The Cape Cod Times reports that Packard was pulled out of the water by his crewman and rushed back to shore, where he was transported to Cape Cod Hospital. He walked — albeit with a limp — out of the hospital that afternoon.[…]
Packard told WBZ-TV that he was about 45 feet down in the water when he suddenly felt "this huge bump and everything went dark." He initially feared he had been attacked by a shark.
"Then I felt around, and I realized there was no teeth and I had felt, really, no great pain," he said. "And then I realized, 'Oh my God, I'm in a whale's mouth. I'm in a whale's mouth, and he's trying to swallow me.' " […]
After about half a minute, the whale rose to the water's surface and began shaking its head from side to side.
"I just got thrown in the air and landed in the water," Packard recalled. "And I was free, and I just floated there … I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I got out of that."
image: Jonah and the Whale (1621) by Pieter Lastman (Public Domain)
