In this story, a man was swallowed by a whale. And no — it didn’t take place in the pages of the Old Testament to a man named Jonah. It happened to a lobster diver named Michael Packard off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Packard had set off early in the morning on Friday, June 11 to dive for lobsters with his fishing partner, Josiah Mayo. After a disappointing first haul, Packard dove under the water to try again just before 8 a.m.
But as he scoured the sandy bottom of Herring Beach Cove, something suddenly struck him from behind.
“All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” Packard later recalled.
From the surface, Mayo watched as Packard’s air bubbles suddenly vanished. But he couldn’t have possibly guessed what had happened to his partner below the waves.
A humpback whale had accidentally swallowed Packard in one huge gulp.
“Everything went dark,” Packard said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, did I just get bit by a shark?’ Then I felt around and I realized there was no teeth and I had felt, really, no great pain.
“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.’”
For a terrifying stretch of 30-40 seconds, Packard struggled in the darkness. Questions raced through his head. He still had his breathing apparatus on — would he be stuck in the whale’s mouth until he ran out of air? What would happen to his wife and teenage children?
“I thought to myself, ‘OK, this is it… I’m going to die,’ And I thought about my kids and my wife. There was no getting out of there.” Packard said, recalling that he could feel the whale squeezing the muscles of its mouth.
But then the whale started to shake its head. Packard felt himself zoom toward the surface. And, like that, he was free.
