The Incredible Story of the Man Swallowed and Spit Out by a Humpback Whale

“I thought it had eaten me and swallowed me,” Adrián Simancas says of the moment a humpback whale took him into its mouth.

Simancas was packrafting with his father in Bahía El Águila near the San Isidro lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan, when the incident recently occurred.

The footage – taken by his father, Dell Simancas – shows the whale surface, take the young man into its mouth, submerge, and spit the man (and his boat) out again.

“I saw something between blue and white that passed close to my face and it was like on one side and above me. I didn’t understand what was happening and then I felt like I was drowning.

“I thought it had eaten me,” the 20-year-old says.

“I didn’t see Adrian for three seconds and I got scared. When I turned around I didn’t see anything, I didn’t see Adrian. That was the only real scary moment I had, because I didn’t see him for like three seconds. And suddenly he just shot out,” Dell Simancas told local media.

“I thought I was dead,” Adrián Simancas told the Associated Press. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.” He says his real fear set in after resurfacing. “When I came up and started floating, I was scared that something might happen to my father too, that we wouldn’t reach the shore in time, or that I would get hypothermia.”

After he was spat out, alive, unscathed and with the probable nickname of Jonah for the rest of his life, Simancas’ father got into action. Dell Simancas towed his son to the shore while giving him instructions to remain calm. In the footage he can be heard shouting instructions, saying ‘calm down’ and ‘grab the boat’ as the whale appears again before disappearing beneath the water.

Adrian then says to his father: “I thought [it] had swallowed me.”

Both men were physically unharmed.

All images used in this article are clips from the video taken by Dell Simancas.

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