A diver swallowed by a whale reveals what it’s like inside the animal after it narrowly escaped being spat into the sea

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A DIVER swallowed by a whale showed what it’s like to be inside one of the giant creatures.

Michael Packard was fishing for lobster in the sea off Cape Cod, Massachusetts when he had the biblical encounter with the humpback whale.

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It was 8 a.m. and the father-of-two had headed out to sea for his second dive of the day to pick lobsters from the ocean floor when he was hit 10 feet from the bottom, feeling like a 100-ton truck.

“All of a sudden I felt this huge jolt and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” said the Cape Cod Times.

“I could feel myself moving and I could feel the whale squeezing the muscles in its mouth.”

At first he thought he was inside a great white shark, but he could not feel any teeth and had suffered no obvious wounds.

It then quickly dawned on him that he had been swallowed by a whale in the 2021 encounter.

“I was completely inside, it was completely black,” Packard said.

“I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.” All I could think about was my boys – they’re 12 and 15 years old.”

Michael had to grope around in the whale’s mouth in the dark.

The whale started shaking its head so Packard could tell the creature didn’t like having it in its mouth.

He estimated he was inside the whale for 30 to 40 seconds before finally emerging.

“I saw light and he started tossing his head back and forth and the next thing I knew I was out,” Packard said.

“I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I got out of there.”

His crewmate, frantically scanning the water for telltale air bubbles from Michael’s oxygen tank, heaved him back into the boat.

While appearing on the Jimmy Kimmel show, Michael joked, “I want to apologize to the whale for getting in his way.

“And I will never do it again.”

Humpback whales can grow up to 50 feet long and weigh around 36 tons.

They tend to feed by opening their mouths wide to swallow as much prey as possible, such as fish or krill.

“Based on what has been described, this would have to be a mistake and an accident on the part of the humpback whale,” said Jooke Robbins, director of humpback whale studies at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.

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