Like Pinocchio: A Fisherman Is “Swallowed” By A Whale And Then Spat Out.
An adventure that he will certainly remember and that he will tell until the end of his life, lived by the underwater hunter Michael Packard in Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. It was a perfectly normal day with excellent visibility for him and a friend with whom, onboard his boat, he had gone lobster fishing.
What happened to him that was so incredible? It made a “turn” between the jaws of a humpback whale. Yes, you read that right: almost as if he was some kind of Pinocchio-fisherman, Packard suddenly found himself with his whole body inside the whale. Luckily, the animal spat it out soon after, and the man was able to run away and tell the world about his incredible experience.
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image credit: Cape Cod Times
“I thought I was not going to make it, says the man, suddenly I felt a push and the next moment everything was black, I was inside the whale”. Rather disturbing and absurd, right? Yet that is exactly what happened to this man who, in order to defend himself, instinctively began to implement a “strategy” which fortunately made the humpback whale give up swallowing it whole.
Thirty seconds seemed like an eternity: that’s the time Michael spent inside the animal. Inside his jaws, the 56-year-old man began to fidget, struggling and trying, by all means, to see a glimmer of hope again. Probably, this is precisely what bothered the whale, which, with a sort of “cough”, threw it outside.
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image credit: Wikimedia Commons – Not the actual photo
“I immediately thought of a great white shark ,” said Packard when asked about his adventure. “In there, in the dark, however, I realized that there were no teeth, and then I understood, immediately thinking that my end was near.”
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image credit: NOAA’s National Ocean Service/Flickr – Not the actual photo
Despite the adventure he had had, the 56-year-old said he did not want to give up diving . It’s unbelievable that he got away with just a suspected knee sprain. Such an episode would therefore be completely accidental and fortuitous , since humpback whales are not aggressive towards humans, and the conformation of the digestive system does not allow them to actually swallow them.
Who knows if the whale that “welcomed” Michael only wanted to taste him …. In the meantime, this man can say that he escaped it narrowly and that he was Pinocchio for a day!
source used: CBS Boston