These incidents involving humpback whales are rare. In 2021, American lobster diver Michael Packard was swallowed briefly by one as well.
“All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” he told the Cape Cod Times. “I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth.”
He said that after less than a minute of being in pitch blackness, “I saw light, and he started throwing his head side to side, and the next thing I knew I was outside.”
Ultimately, it is scientifically impossible for a humpback whale to fully swallow a human, although it can easily fit one inside its huge mouth, which can reach around 10 feet, according to Nicola Hodgins of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a U.K. nonprofit.
The reason? A humpback’s throat is roughly the size of a human fist, she told National Geographic in 2021, and can only stretch to about 15 inches in diameter.
