A lobster diver in Provincetown, Massachusetts, was swallowed by a humpback whale recently but he survived with just minor injuries.
“I was completely inside,” the lobsterman, Michael Packard, 56, told the Cape Cod Times.
Packard, a veteran diver from Wellfleet, was on his second dive of the day just before 8 in the morning. He was working from the boat Ja’n J, off Herring Beach Cove. A fleet of other boats were fishing for striped bass nearby.
A commercial lobster diver, Packard dove down. When he was about ten feet from the bottom, he said, “All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black.” He said he could feel the whale moving through the water, squeezing him with the muscles in its mouth.
“I thought to myself, ‘there’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead,” he said.
Packard was wearing his scuba gear, and he said he could feel the whale struggle, shaking its head. He thinks he was in the whale’s mouth for 30 or 40 seconds. He says he saw light and the whale was throwing its head from side to side. “The next thing I knew I was outside,” he said.
Josiah Mayho, a crewman on the Ja’n J, saw the whale toss Packard from its mouth and picked him up. Mayho alerted authorities and drove back to the Provincetown pier, where an ambulance was waiting.
Packard was treated at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis and released with no broken bones but with what he called “a lot of soft tissue damage.” He said he will go diving again when he feels better. Read more:
