A kayaker off the coast of Chile was recently swallowed whole by a humpback whale before being spat out shortly after. The harrowing incident captured on film has been described as a modern-day rendition of the biblical account of Jonah being swallowed by the massive sea mammal and later regurgitated.
Adrián Simancas was being filmed by his father while kayaking when the massive whale surfaced near him. The creature’s mouth opened around the 23-year-old, engulfing him as he disappeared under the water. However, moments later, as his father frantically watched, Simancas miraculously resurfaced after the whale decided he wasn’t worthy of being a snack.
Simancas recounted the incident, sharing his thoughts during the encounter. “I spent a second realizing I was inside the mouth of something, that maybe it had eaten me, that it could have been an orca or a sea monster,” he said. “I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I realized I was inside the whale’s mouth,”
According to the 23-year-old, the first thing he noticed was the “slimy” texture of the whale’s mouth. “I felt a slimy texture brush my face,” he said. “I wondered what I could do if it had swallowed me since I could no longer fight to stop it,” he added “I had to think about what to do next.” Simancas said, “I was a little afraid of whether I would be able to hold my breath because I didn’t know how deep I was, and I felt like it took me a long time to come up.”
“I went up for two seconds, and finally, I got to the surface and realized that it hadn’t eaten me,” he noted, revealing his thoughts as he surfaced for air. Adrián’s father, Dell, explained what he was thinking during the fiasco. “I was worried for a second, until I saw him coming up out of the sea,” the 49-year-old said.
“Then I saw something, a body, which I immediately interpreted as most likely being a whale because of its size,” the father said. “I hadn’t seen the moment when the back appears, and the fin is visible. I didn’t see it, I heard it. That made me nervous,” he continued. “But later, with the video, I realized that it actually appeared before me in such a huge size that perhaps if I had seen it, it would have scared me even more.”
One user on X wrote about the amazing nature of whales, “Humpback whales are amazing and have some awesome habits. They are known for their unique feeding technique called “bubble net feeding,” where they blow bubbles in a spiral pattern to create a “net” that traps fish, making it easier for them to scoop up large quantities of prey. This behavior might explain the accidental swallowing and subsequent release of the 20-year-old man, as the whale could have been attempting to feed when it encountered the packrafter.”
"*" indicates required fields
Watch the incident below:
Another person opined, “Humpback whales have balleen in their mouths to filter krill, which are like shrimp. The whales gather them up by swimming in a rising circle while blowing bubbles. Then rises up the column to surface mouth wide open to swallow the krill. Guy was in that spot at that time.”
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.