What American Michael Packard experienced at sea two years ago may be more reminiscent of the biblical story of Jonah than reality.

The 58-year-old was diving for lobster off Massachusetts on the US East Coast when the unthinkable happened.

Dagbladet mentioned the incident when it happened in 2021.

– On my third dive, I started to sink to the bottom. Then I felt a big bang, like a freight train. Then suddenly everything went black, he told the local newspaper Cape Cod weather.

eaten alive

The experienced diver initially thought he had been attacked by a large shark, but was neither bitten nor injured.

In the Bible you can read the story of Jonah who was swallowed by a large whale and remained in its belly for three days until it was spat out on the beach.

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Packard was also swallowed by a humpback whale.

– I could move, but I felt that the mouth of the whale tightened around me, he tells the local newspaper.

Moreover, a battle had to take place, deep in the mouth of the whale.

badly swallowed

Packard began to grope around the whale’s dark mouth. At the same time, he lost his diving equipment and could not breathe.

Then the 58-year-old thought he was going to die. He said his thoughts were with his wife and two children.

Hit by his mother – dead

The humpback whale usually eats krill and small fish. The 58-year-old thinks the whale must have noticed it was swallowing badly as it quickly started moving towards the surface.

He believes he was inside the whale between 30 and 40 seconds.

– I saw light and the whale started shaking its head from side to side. All of a sudden I was back in the water, he said.

In the end, everything went well with Packard, and together with his fishing buddy Josiah Mayo they appeared on American Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show.

40 tons of weight

The humpback whale’s name comes from the fact that the head and edges of the whale’s forelimbs are studded with wart-like growths or “bumps”. It can be 16 to 17 meters long and weigh 30 to 40 tons, according to the report. Great Norwegian Encyclopedia.

Parents rave about these details

The humpback whale is found in all oceans, both in the northern and southern hemisphere. Humpback whales were caught in Norwegian waters from 1881 to 1955, when the species was protected in the North Atlantic. Today, the humpback whale is important for tourism in northern Norway, where whale watching is organized in winter.