The ocean can be a terrifying place.
That thought became a reality on Feb. 8 when kayaker Adrián Simancas was paddling off the coast of Chile and a humpback whale suddenly breached the surface and swallowed him whole.
In footage captured by his dad Dell, the whale caught Adrián in its mouth and took him below the surface for a few seconds before he miraculously emerged unharmed.
“At first I thought I had died,” Adrián told the Associated Press in an interview published Feb. 13. “I thought it had already eaten me and swallowed me. It was, of course, a lot of terror because I thought there was nothing I could do.”
But as the Chilean native tread water, guided by his dad’s encouragement to remain calm, Adrián’s fear wasn’t just for his own safety.
“When I came up and started floating,” he continued, “I was scared that something might happen to my father too, that we wouldn’t reach the shore in time, or that I would get hypothermia.”
