And he will be able to tell a story for the rest of his life that will never be topped. He was treated at the hospital for minor injuries and released the same day. Humpback whales have no teeth, so besides not being swallowed, Mike was not chewed. Whales have no issue with humans, but mistakes do happen, and this was clearly one of them, which luckily did not cost a good man his life. They are here to feed and fatten up before they migrate south. I have run well over 1,000 whale watch trips out of Provincetown and have never seen dangerously aggressive behavior from a humpback or finback whale around boats. These whales are not aggressive, no matter what you might have read in Moby-Dick. We had a fin whale accidentally hit Vaughn Cabral’s boat last year and semi-swamp him. Or, being young, this humpback could have been doing what young animals do, including some goofy, irrational behavior. This whale could have been feeding when Mike accidentally got in the way. And once a 10-to-30-ton animal decides to lunge, there is no stopping it. In order to catch their preferred foods, whales have to lunge very fast and hard into a school of fish to get the most bang for the buck. They are not looking for anything as large as a human being.

Josiah got Mike into the boat, radioed the rescue squad, and sped back to MacMillan Pier, where Mike was taken to Cape Cod Hospital.īefore we get all crazy with theories of whales gone bad, keep in mind that they eat small sand eels, herring, mackerel, and pogies. The whale, for reasons we will never know, had taken Mike into its large mouth and up to the surface, where it spit him out. Then the shadow broke the surface and Josiah immediately saw it was a young humpback whale. He saw a big dark shadow and thought Mike might be in trouble with a great white shark. Mike’s mate, Josiah Mayo, watched him dive to about 30 feet when he noticed some turbulence in the water. This has always been a great area for lobsters. The water isn’t very deep where he likes to dive, along the edge between Race Point and Wood End. He flipped backwards into the water from his boat, the J a’n J, and proceeded to descend. As he does on many days, he was diving off Herring Cove.

He has been diving for lobsters for decades, and he does it better than most. Mike, 56, is the local fisherman who is now famous for spending about 30 seconds in a whale’s mouth on Friday morning, June 11. Lobster diver Mike Packard after escaping the humpback’s mouth with only minor injuries.

A whale’s gullet is approximately the size of a softball, so there is no way it could ever swallow a man. Jonah was vomited by the whale onto dry land.PROVINCETOWN - First of all, Mike Packard was not “gulped down” by a humpback whale, as the Boston Herald reported, nor was he “swallowed” by the whale, as the Cape Cod Times reported. After Jonah was finished praying God commanded the whale to spit Jonah out. Jonah prayed the God while he was in the belly of the whale.

There Jonah stayed in the belly of the whale for 3 days and 3 nights. Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.Jonah 1:17Īs we know we cannot run nor hide from God. These men even made a sacrifice to the Lord afterwards too. The crew then realized who the real God was. Jonah told them to throw me in the sea and it will be calm for you. The men asked what can we do to make the sea calm again. Oh my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to. According to local news station WBZ-TV, Michael Packard, 56, was diving for lobster off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts early on Friday morning, when, suddenly, everything went dark. Jonah acknowledged that God was the creator. A humpback whale had the unfortunate experience of almost swallowing a human man on Friday. They asked who he was, he told them he is Hebrew and that he fears God, the creator of heavens, land and sea. As we all know he was the reason, he was running from God. The crew cast lots, that lot fell on Jonah as he was the reason for the storm. Jonah was asleep during the storm, the captain came to him and asked why he was asleep and asked him to call to God to calm the storm. As he was aboard the ship, a great terrible storm came. Jonah inside whale clipart by Christian Clip Arts

Man eaten by whale