In what would sound like a ”fishy” tale, a US lobster fisherman said he was swallowed by a humpback whale and spat out by the creature on June 11.
Fisherman Michael Packard highlighted the incident on his Facebook page, saying he was trapped in the whale’s mouth for between 30 to 40 seconds underwater before it rose to the surface and vomited him out.
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Packard’s brush with the whale occurred while he was diving for lobster at 35 feet depth off the coast of Massachusetts. Feeling something push him, the fisherman thought he had been attacked by a shark and struggles as it suddenly became dark.
Glimpsing some daylight, he began throwing his head from side-to-side and was spat out by the whale – earning a few bruises but no bones broken.
The fisherman told local paper Cape Cod Times that his fishing mate Josiah Mayo “saw the explosion of water as the whale surfaced and he was ejected.”
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Meanwhile, Jooke Robbins, director of humpback whale studies at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, said that she believed the fisherman’s story because she knew the people involved.
However, while she had never heard of such type of “accident” occurring, it may have happened due to the fisherman “being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Robbins said, adding that whales rush forward with huge mouths open and engulf schools of fish quickly, but would spit out humans due to their throats being narrow.
Robbins however emphasized the need for people to maintain total distance from whales feeding at sea.
