Massachusetts lobster diver swallowed by whale

Michael Packard thought he was being eaten by a shark. But he couldn’t feel any teeth.

When veteran lobster diver Michael Packard jumped off his boat off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts on Friday morning, he felt a huge bump, and everything went dark.

After four decades of regular diving, Packard at first thought he was being attacked by a shark.

Only, as he splashed around, he couldn’t feel any teeth.

It was then Packard, a modern-day Jonah, realised he had been swallowed by a whale.

“I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth,” Packard, 56, told the Cape Cod Times.

“I was completely inside. It was completely black,” Packard said. “I thought to myself, “there’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.

“All I could think of was my boys — they’re 12 and 15 years old.”

Wearing a thick layer of scuba gear, Packard struggled, causing the humpback to shake its head, indicating it didn’t like it.

Packard estimates he was in the mouth for 30 to 40 seconds before the whale finally resurfaced and spat him.

“I saw light, and he started throwing his head side to side, and the next thing I knew I was outside (in the water),” said Packard, who lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

Bruised, but suffering no broken bones, Packard was taken to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis where he was given the thumbs up to head home just hours later.

The instance was most likely a mistake on behalf of the whale, Jooke Robbins, director of Humpback Whale Studies at the Centre for Coastal Studies in Provincetown told the Cape Cod Times.

“Based on what was described, this would have to be a mistake and an accident on the part of the humpback,” she said.

“Humpbacks are not aggressive animals, particularly toward humans.”

She said the oesophagus of a non-toothed whale is “too small” to swallow a human, but they could wrap their mouth around a large object then spit it out.