The Fisherman Who Got Away

Fishermen’s tales are legendary for the ones that got away. In this case, though, it’s the fisherman who got away. Not from a fish, though: from something even bigger.

Lobster fisherman Michael Packard was swallowed whole and spat out by a humpback whale.

Last week, Packard was diving for lobster at Herring Beach Cove, near Provincetown, Massachusetts. Just another day on the job.

“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, [Josiah 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.

Humpback whales are some of the largest carnivores in the world: but their prey are normally the tiniest creatures in the world. Humpbacks feed on krill, tiny ocean krill and zooplankton. They do so by sucking in huge gulps of water, which they strain through their curtain-like plates of “teeth” called baleen. The baleen filter the near-microscopic creatures the whales subsist on.

This time, though, a humpback had gulped up literally more than it could swallow.

“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.

Luckily for Packard, a human is not exactly suited to a humpback whale’s palate.

But then the whale started to shake its head. Packard felt himself zoom toward the surface. And, like that, he was free.

From their ship, Mayo saw a burst of white water. Then he spotted Packard — soaring through the air. A charter boat captain named Joe Francis saw the same thing.

“I saw Mike come flying out of the water, feet first with his flippers on, and land back in the water,” Francis said. He jumped aboard Mayo’s boat and helped pull Packard out of the water.

Remarkably, Packard suffered relatively few injuries. No broken bones, no bends from being so unceremoniously spat out from the bottom of the bay. He plans on being back in the water within the week.

And possibly applying for the Badass of the Year award.

In addition to his encounter with the whale, Packard has survived a plane crash, confrontations with great white sharks, and almost getting lost at sea.

All That’s Interesting

Presumably, though, he just doesn’t taste that great.

This is not the first time a diver has been accidentally sucked up by a whale. In 2019, a whale similarly sucked up and spat out dive tour operator Rainier Schimpf, off the South African coast.

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