Terrifying Footage Shows a Huge Whale Gobbling up a Kayaker — Then a Miracle Happened

Humpback whales, while harmless, are curious beings and tend to approach boats or humans. These ‘gentle giants’ distinguished by the humps on their backs are crucial to the ocean’s ecosystem as they maintain balance in the food chain acting as filter feeders, per a Dana Wharf report. However, the massive size of the whales can be intimidating for seafarers and small boats. In a recent incident, a humpback whale momentarily swallowed an entire kayak along with the man riding it off the Chilean Patagonia last week, per Oregon Live. 

Fortunately, the whale released it back instantly and the kayaker was left unharmed. The incident was caught on camera and lit up the internet sending netizens into a frenzy. The kayaker identified as Adrian Simancas was reportedly kayaking with his father Dell in Bahia El Aguila near the San Isidro Lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan. Around the same time, a curious humpback whale emerged out of the water and gulped him into its mouth. “I thought I was dead. I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me,” Simancas told the outlet. 

Meanwhile, his father Dell can be heard reassuring his son, who managed to just beat death, “Stay calm, stay calm” as he recorded the incident. Floating in the water for a moment, Simancas managed to reach his father’s kayak and both returned to the shore safely. "Suddenly, I felt like a wave struck me from behind, but it was very, very heavy to be anything like it. So when I turned around, I saw some blue dark colors and white flash right through my face, and I felt a slimy texture in my cheek. And then it shut down on me and took me underwater," the kayaker described to CNN. “I guess, I was inside the, something's mouth. I didn't know it was a whale,” he added.

According to him, the terrifying experience was not only limited to him as Simancas feared for his father nearby. He anticipated an attack on his father too or that they would be out of time. “When I came up and started floating, I was scared that something might happen to my father too,” he added. Although, his father, Dell’s presence of mind during the crisis, helping his son safely escape the scene all while documenting the incident was worth admiring. While these giant deep-sea creatures are impossible to tackle, their population has been declining over the years. 

Commercial whaling and clashes with cargo ships have toppled their numbers to alarmingly low levels, per an NOAA report. Humpback whales were marked as endangered species by the United States in 1970. While the direct impacts of climate change on their survival are unknown, it is one of the largest threats to their foraging habitats in the high-latitude regions. The melting sea ice and warming climates have disturbed their prey distribution forcing the whales to survive on poor nutrition and diminished reproduction. 

Unlike killer whales, they are not aggressive in nature and generally feed on small crustaceans like krill and other small fish. They are spread throughout the world’s oceans and are known to seasonally migrate as far as 5,000 miles between high-latitude summer feeding grounds and winter mating and calving areas in tropical waters. Earlier, a tragic incident saw a killer whale carrying its dead offspring for over two weeks, which scientists marked was a display of mourning behavior. For those unversed, whales are highly intelligent and social mammals who have the capability to learn and adapt to new environments.