PROVINCETOWN: A diver says he’s lucky to be alive after he was swallowed and spat out by a humpback whale,
Yahoo News reported.
Michael Packard
(pic), from Wellfleet, Massachusetts, US wrote on
Facebook he was lobster diving, on Friday, before he found himself inside the mouth of a whale.
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“I was in his closed mouth for about 30 to 40 seconds before he rose to the surface and spit me out. I am very bruised up but have no broken bones,” the 56-year-old wrote.
Packard told
Cape Cod Times he “felt this huge shove” before everything “went completely black” as he realised he was inside the whale.
"I thought to myself, 'there's no way I'm getting out of here. I'm done, I'm dead'," he told the paper.
He added he began shaking the whale's head from the inside to try to get it to spit him up which it did.
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Packard told
WBZ-TV was “thrown in the air” and landed back in the water.
“I couldn’t believe I got out of that,” he said.
Packard was taken to hospital for treatment and has since been released.
Jooke Robbins, director of Humpback Whale Studies at the Centre for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, said it was likely the whale swallowed Packard by accident.
On
Facebook, Packard’s tale was compared to something from
Pinocchio.
“How bad could you taste? Just kidding. Thank god you’re safe,” one woman wrote.
One man joked he wanted to hear the whale's side of the story while another woman suggested he try his luck with a lottery ticket now.
“Wow. What a whale of a tale,” another man wrote.
