For Michael Packard, the waters off Provincetown, Massachusetts, are usually a place of business and routine, but on June 11, the ocean became the stage for a story almost too extraordinary to believe. The commercial lobster diver found himself inside the mouth of a massive humpback whale—and lived to tell the tale.
Packard, 56, and his fishing partner, Josiah Mayo, began their day at Herring Beach Cove at dawn. With lobsters proving elusive, they decided to make one more dive just before 8 a.m. Mayo stayed aboard their vessel, ready to assist, while Packard slipped below the surface to scan the sandy bottom.
Seconds into his search, Packard felt a powerful shove that defied explanation. Suddenly, everything went dark. “All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove, and the next thing I knew, it was completely black,” Packard recalled. His initial thought was every diver’s worst nightmare: a shark attack. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, did I just get bit by a shark?’” But there were no teeth tearing into his flesh, and, astonishingly, no excruciating pain. “I felt around and realized there were no teeth. Then I understood—I was in a whale’s mouth.”
The humpback whale, one of the ocean’s most majestic giants, seemed to have accidentally gulped Packard in a feeding mishap. Marine biologists note that these whales are not predators of humans, generally preferring to consume krill and small fish. Peter Corkeron, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium, explained: “They do what we call gulp feeding, and they can open their mouths incredibly widely. It appears this whale simply made a mistake.”
For 30 harrowing seconds, Packard remained trapped inside the whale’s mouth, bracing himself for what he feared was certain death. “I was completely frozen. All I could think of was my boys and my wife,” he said. Then, just as suddenly as he had been swallowed, he was ejected. The whale shook its head and spat Packard out, sending him hurtling back to the surface. Mayo, watching from the boat, saw a burst of white water and quickly located Packard, who was floating in the aftermath of his near-death experience.
Charter boat captain Joe Francis witnessed the chaos from a nearby vessel. He rushed over to assist Mayo in hauling Packard out of the water. “I was inside it. I was inside its mouth,” Packard exclaimed, gasping for breath. “It tried to eat me!”
Incredibly, Packard’s injuries were minor. Shaken but alive, he was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital, where doctors treated him for soft-tissue damage and released him the same day. His survival, experts agree, is nothing short of miraculous.
Despite the trauma, Packard has no intention of giving up diving. A seasoned veteran of the sea, he has faced bizarre incidents before, including once discovering the corpse of a missing person. “It’s part of the job,” he shrugged. His partner, Mayo, remains in awe of Packard’s resilience. “He’s a tough son of a gun,” Mayo said. “It looks like he’s ready to be back at it. I think we’ll probably be diving in a week, which is pretty remarkable.”
Packard, who later posted a heartfelt message of gratitude for his rescuers on social media, now has a story for the ages: one that puts him in the rare company of Jonah, the legendary figure from biblical lore swallowed by a whale. Only this time, the tale is real, and Michael Packard lived to see another dive.
