A Cape Cod lobster diver, who says a humpback whale swallowed him, is opening up about his experience.
Michael Packard, 56, was on the coast of Provincetown, MA early Friday morning when he was picking up lobsters 35 feet underwater, at which point he claims the whale swallowed him.
“All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” Packard told the Cape Cod Times. “I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth.”
While he initially thought he was stuck inside a shark, he realized that because he didn’t feel any teeth, that couldn’t have been the case.
“I was completely inside; it was completely black,” Packard said. “I thought to myself, ‘there’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.’ All I could think of was my boys — they’re 12 and 15 years old.”
Packard claims he was inside the animal for 30-40 seconds in his scuba gear when his struggles began to upset the whale, as it eventually surfaced. Crewman Josiah Mayo reportedly saw the whale jump to the surface, and Packard claims it spit him out.
“Thank God, it wasn’t a white shark. He sees them all the time out there,” said sister Cynthia Packard. “He must have thought he was done.”
Charles “Stormy” Mayo, a senior scientist and whale expert at the Center for Coastal Studies, said that he’s “not aware of a single incident of people having problems with” humpback whales in areas where they swim or dive around them.
“Michael is a smart guy and an exceptional diver,” Stormy Mayo said. “For that to happen to him, you can be sure he did everything he was supposed to do.”
Packard was eventually released from Cape Cod Hospital Friday after suffering from soft tissue damage, but he didn’t have any broken bones after the incident.
But this wasn’t Michael’s only encounter with a close call in his lifetime. As the Cape Cod Times reports, the lobster diver has had another dangerous run-in, as he was traveling to Costa Rica 10 years ago when his small plane crashed in the jungle. The impact killed the pilot, co-pilot and a passenger, but Packard survived after some serious injuries. Five remaining passengers were found in the jungle after two nights.
