{"id":805,"date":"2022-08-19T06:25:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T06:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/?p=805"},"modified":"2022-09-04T01:04:46","modified_gmt":"2022-09-04T01:04:46","slug":"humans-swallowed-whole-by-humpback-whale-spit-back-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/humans-swallowed-whole-by-humpback-whale-spit-back-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Real life Pinocchio? Lobster diver and kayaker gulped by humpback whales and spit back out again"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\n2021: A LOBSTER diver was swallowed whole by a humpback whale and then lived to tell about it after getting spit out.<\/a> Wearing scuba gear Michael Packard of Wellfleet Massachusetts estimates he was about 45-feet deep scoping for crustaceans when suddenly he felt a \u201chuge bump,\u201d according to an interview he gave to WBZ. When he came to he was surrounded by darkness.

\n\nInitially the 56-year-old assumed he\u2019d been bitten by a massive white shark. But then he oriented himself and didn\u2019t see any teeth. That\u2019s when it dawned on him: \u201cI realized \u2018My God, I\u2019m in a whale\u2019s mouth. I\u2019m in a whale\u2019s mouth – and he\u2019s trying to swallow me.\u201d When the shock set in, a flood of fear came at him to face his mortality. \u201cI thought myself \u2018This is it. I finally — I\u2019m gonna die,\u2019\u201d he told WBZ. Packard started to dote on his wife and his sons, 12 and 15 in that terrifying moment, according to the Cape Cod Times.

\n\nAfter about 30 to 40 seconds of being trapped in the massive beast\u2019s maw Packard said some kind of divine intervention occurred. \u201cAll of a sudden he went to the surface and erupted and started shaking his head and I got thrown into the water,\u201d Packard recalled in the interview with WBZ. \u201cAnd I was free.\u201d

\n\nWhen he was chucked out of the mouth like a sunflower seed shell and landed in the water virtually unscathed save for bruised legs, Packard was simply dumbfounded. \u201cI just couldn’t believe it,\u201d he said. \u201cI couldn’t believe I got out of that.\u201d

\n\nDespite his wife’s pleas to get another job, he has no plans of giving up a 40-year career diving off Cape Cod.<\/a> Humpback whales can grow to as long as 50ft (15m) and weigh about 36 tons. According to the World Wildlife Fund, their global population is about 60,000.

\n\nHumpback whales tend to feed by opening their mouth wide to gulp down as much prey, like fish or krill, as possible, leading marine scientists to speculate that what happened to Mr Packard was in all likelihood purely accidental. One expert told the Cape Cod Times it was practically unheard of for a whale to swallow a human.

\n\nHumpbacks are not aggressive animals; reports of whales attacking humans are nearly unheard of, reports the Cape Cod Times.<\/a> The whale was likely a young juvenile searching for food, reports Maria Cramer for the New York Times. “I like to think of it as a teenager or a puppy. It probably doesn’t know what it’s doing too well,” Mayo tells the Post.

\n\nHe wasn’t swallowed in the true sense of the word.<\/a> As Nicola Hodgins of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a U.K. nonprofit, told National Geographic, while a humpback can easily fit a human inside its huge 10-foot mouth, it’s scientifically impossible for the whale to swallow a human, as their throats are only around size of a human fist, and only stretch to a maximum diameter of 15 inches.

\n\nJulie McSorley and Liz Cottriel were kayaking in California\u2019s San Luis Obispo Bay when they found themselves inside the mouth of a humpback whale. The act was caught on video by people nearby.<\/a> \u201cIt\u2019s definitely woke me up to the realization that, you know, our place is not in the feeding zone of whales,\u201d McSorley said in 2020. \u201cWe didn\u2019t think we were that close, but we definitely were right in the area that we shouldn\u2019t have been \u2014 so I\u2019ve learned my lesson, big time.\u201d

\n\nThe caption is translated on Twitter, \u201cA humpback whale swallows two women in California. The girls were kayaking when they were caught in one bite by the whale, who was behind a school of fish, the huge cetacean does NOT eat humans and in a few seconds spit them out alive LUCK.\u201d The women didn\u2019t suffer any ijuries and were treated promptly by witnesses present. World Nation News reports the throat size of a humpback is designed for little fish, so the animal can\u2019t and won\u2019t consume humans.

\n\n(unquote)

\n\nImage courtesy Personnel of NOAA Ship RAINIER via Wikicommons Public domain<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(quote) 2021: A LOBSTER diver was swallowed whole by a humpback whale and then lived to tell about it after getting spit out. Wearing scuba gear Michael Packard of Wellfleet Massachusetts estimates he was about 45-feet deep scoping for crustaceans when suddenly he felt a \u201chuge bump,\u201d according to anRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,11,12],"tags":[44,39,54,60,68],"class_list":["entry","author-wcp-story-teller","post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-figures-and-facts","category-life-nature-society","category-science-and-technology","category-us-and-world","tag-animals","tag-nature","tag-ocean","tag-true-story","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldculturepictorial.com\/wcp-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}