Meanwhile in Cape Cod: Lobster Diver Describes Being Swallowed by a Whale, Sounds Distinctly Like Us After We Lost Our Virginity

Photo: Mike Korostelev (Getty Images)

The ocean is a scary place. That’s why we like to stand on the beach and look out at it and maybe wade a few feet out into it. It’s filled with frothy, spooky darkness and giant creatures just waiting to snatch you and drag you down to the briny depths. Usually, our ocean-themed nightmares center around giant squids, ferocious sharks, and getting tangled in the tentacles of giant, stinging jellyfish. But maybe we should add humpback whales to the list because apparently, these giant, sea-dwelling mammals want to eat us (sort of).

That’s exactly what happened recently off the coast of Cape Cod. In what was most likely (hopefully) a complete fluke, a commercial lobster diver was swallowed whole by a humpback whale. And no, he didn’t sing a sea ballad like The Decemberists while he was in the creature’s belly. That’s because the whale realized its mistake and spewed him back out into the ocean waves.

56-year-old Michael Packard posted the whole ordeal on his Facebook account and gave an interview to a local TV station. He had been diving off the coast of Provincetown when the aquatic mammal appeared from below, mouth agape, and swallowed him.

“I was in his closed mouth for about 30 to 40 seconds before he rose to the surface and spit me out,” he wrote on Facebook. “I am very bruised up but have no broken bones.”

Who knows what the whale was thinking? Humpback whales live on a diet of shrimp-like crustaceans called krill and small fish. Definitely not big, meaty humans. But it’s safe to say, Packard will be a little more cautious about what’s beasts are swimming around him in the future. Either that or he’ll just assume the odds of this happening again are pretty much zero.

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