A Kayaker Almost Became Lunch When He Was Swallowed by a Whale

In a story that seems like it was pulled directly from a Grimm's fairy tale, one man is lucky to be alive after being swallowed by a whale.

A pair of kayakers were floating off the coast of Chile when the unbelievable incident happened. As strange as it may sound, there is footage from the harrowing incident proving the whale of a tale occurred.

You can learn more about the kayaker who was swallowed by a humpback whale below, including the interesting way that he and others have described the sensation of being swallowed by a whale. Spoiler alert: it's not as painful as it sounds!

Dell Simancas pulled out his camera to film some “pretty waves that seemed exciting." At the same time, his son, Adrian Simancas, floated in the waters just off the coast of Patagonia when the unimaginable happened, according to CNN.

One moment, the younger Simancas was sitting in the center of his kayak, bobbing peacefully in the water, and the next moment, a large mouth opened from underneath him, appearing to swallow him whole.

The elder Simancas told CNN that he heard “what sounds like a strong wave hitting behind me and when I turn around, I don’t see Adrian or his pack raft, so I got worried, and around three seconds later I see he’s shot up to the surface and the pack raft after him.”

Viewers of the video can even hear the fear in the father's voice as he calls out to his son and then yells at him to "grab the boat" once the young man and his gear resurfaced, looking no worse for the wear.

Simancas told NBC News he originally thought he had been swallowed by a killer whale because he and his father had been talking about orca whales just before the incident.

In an interview with CNN, he described the sensation of being pulled into the whale's mouth. “When I turned around, I felt on my face like a slimy texture; I saw colors like dark blue, white, something approaching from behind that closed… and sank me.”

“At that moment, I thought there was nothing I could do, that I was going to die, I didn’t know what it was,” Simancas continued. Believe it or not, Simancas isn't the only one to walk away from such an encounter.

In 2021, a lobster diver named Michael Packard recounted his story to the Cape Cod Times, saying that he had also been swallowed by a humpback whale. While Simancas came out of his ordeal completely unscathed, this man wasn't as lucky.

Packard had to be hospitalized briefly after what he called 30-40 seconds spent inside the whale's mouth, which he described as being a scary place. 

“I was completely inside; it was completely black,” he said at the time. “I thought to myself, ‘There’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.’ All I could think of was my boys — they’re 12 and 15 years old.”

Fortunately, all Packard had to show for his adventure was a lot of cuts and bruises. None of his internal organs or bones were compromised during the incident.

While it's rare for something like this to happen, both of these stories do remind us of the awesome (and scary) power of the creatures that live in the ocean and how we would do well to remember that when we're in or on the water, anything can happen.