Lobster Diver Claims He Was Swallowed By A Sea Creature The Size Of A House

Packard was perfectly used to being out in the coastal waters of Provincetown, Massachusetts, hunting for lobster. He’d done it plenty of times before, but even the most experienced divers can never truly master the ocean. Danger is everywhere, and it can strike at any time. Even when you’re not expecting it.

Things had been going perfectly well, at first. It had been a benign start to the day on this summer morning in June 2021. Packard had swum out into the open water and taken a dive down toward the seabed. All kinds of fish swarmed around him, and all had seemed right with the world. But then, as he neared the bottom, disaster suddenly struck.

Packard felt as though he had been struck by something, a big force colliding with his body. Before he could figure out what it was, total darkness had engulfed him. Had he passed out? No, he still had his wits about him. He was very much awake, and it quickly dawned on him what had happened: he’d been swallowed by something.

But what could possibly have swallowed a fully grown man whole? It would have to be pretty gargantuan to achieve such a feat. Packard ran through the options: could it have been a great white shark? No, he didn’t think so. If it had been, he surely would have been torn up by its fearsome teeth. This was something different.

Monsters and mysterious beasts have always been closely associated with the ocean. Rumors of fantastical creatures have always lingered, with some people even claiming sightings. Could it have been the case, then, that Packard had experienced the terrible misfortune of stumbling right into the path of a being like this?

One of the more famous sea monsters is the Kraken, which is often described as a monstrously large squid of some kind. It resides deep in the ocean, traveling to the surface on occasion to destroy boats sailing above it. The mythical creature has tended to be associated mainly with the waters off Iceland and Norway.

Another famous water monster is said to reside in a lake, rather than the sea. The Loch Ness Monster takes its name from the Scottish lake where it supposedly lives. The beast is claimed to be akin to an extinct plesiosaur, meaning it has slender, lengthy neck and fins shaped almost like paddles. The elusive Nessie, as it’s affectionately known for short, is one of the most famous mythical water beasts ever.

Plenty of stories about the ocean revolve around mermen and mermaids, creatures that can be defined as being half human, half fish. Mermaids are probably more famous than their male counterparts, and they’re renowned for their intense beauty. Their looks, it’s sometimes said, are so alluring that they lead men at sea to their watery graves.

Christopher Columbus actually reported seeing a mermaid during his 1492 voyage to the Americas. The following year, when he was close to what is now the Dominican Republic, he spotted three figures he took to be mermaids, though he noted they were “not half as beautiful as they are painted.” In reality, the likelihood is these were probably just manatees.

The ancient Greeks used to speak of sirens, which were really similar to mermaids — though not necessarily the same. These mythical creatures were said to be the daughters of a deity and a monster, and they were claimed to be responsible for the losses of many ships and their crew. Sailors were said to be hypnotized by the singing voices of the sirens and would be drawn towards them, hitting rocks along the way and sinking.

So there are plenty more mythical sea beasts and monsters to consider, but were any of them relevant in our diver’s case? Whatever it was that got him must have been pretty huge, given it was able to swallow an adult man whole. That’s no mean feat, what exactly had Packard gotten himself into, to coin a phrase?

Packard had amassed a wealth of experience under the waves by the time of this incident. He’d been fishing since around 1990, before opening a business in the industry eight years later. He spends a lot of time fishing over in Costa Rica, but he also spends a fair amount of time around Cape Cod. It was here that his incredible encounter took place.

This was by no means Packard’s first dramatic brush with death. In fact, he’d even made the papers before. About 20 years before being swallowed up by the sea monster, he’d survived an air crash. Three people lost their lives, while Packard and four others had been left to fend for themselves in a Costa Rican jungle.

Packard had been 38 at the time of this first major misfortune, which had happened back in 2001. His flight had been scheduled to take him to Puerto Jimenez, but something went terribly wrong. Down the plane went, leading to the death of the pilot and his co-pilot, as well as one of the passengers. Those who survived were marooned for a few days, fending for themselves in a jungle.

Packard and his fellow survivors managed to alert others to their plight using the radio on board the plane. Even so, as per Associated Press reports from the time, the rescue team that was dispatched didn’t find them particularly quickly. The wreck survivors were, after all, in the middle of a jungle, with few landmarks to signpost their exact location.

In the end, though, Packard and the other survivors were tracked down and brought to safety. And it was just in the nick of time, too: a doctor who assessed the survivors’ injuries from the crash estimated they wouldn’t have made it through another night out there.

You’d think such an intense and unlikely disaster would be enough to last a lifetime, but Packard just doesn’t seem able to catch a break. Yet another improbable and life-threatening calamity was waiting for him down the line, during that swim off Cape Cod. Yes, as we’ve noted, during an early-morning dive in 2021, Packard was engulfed by a beast.

Packard wasn’t the only person out there on the water that day. Plenty of other people were on their boats, looking for fish to catch. It was a fine morning, and soon Packard was in the water and making his way down toward the seabed. Striped bass and sand lances were all around him.

But soon the hunter became the hunted. Packard, in his determination to find some lobster down there, didn’t notice a large presence creeping up behind him. One moment, everything was fine: the next, darkness. Later speaking to newspaper the Cape Cod Times, he recalled, “All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black.”

Right away, Packard’s imagination told him it must have been a shark. But he quickly realized that made no sense, as he most certainly would’ve been shredded by a teeth had that been the case. No, it wasn’t that. And it only took a few moments for him to realize what it was. As he later recalled to TV station NBC10 Boston, he remembered saying to himself, “Oh my God, I’m in the mouth of a whale.”

It was, to be specific, a humpback whale, which is up there with the very biggest of all living creatures. Able to reach something like 60 feet in length and tipping the scales at about 40 tons, these things are genuine giants. They have tiny throats, though, and usually only eat really small fish and other organic matter in the sea. Why, then, had it just gobbled up a man?

Humpbacks don’t actually have teeth, so they consume food in a very specific way. They open their enormous mouths wide, before propelling themselves forward suddenly using their immense tales. That causes a lot of water — and any animals swimming along in it — to gush into the whale’s gaping mouth.

And it really is a lot of water, as biologist Jeremy Goldbogen has explained to website Live Science. He wrote in an email, “The engulfment capacity of a humpback whale is upwards of 50 tonnes [55 tons] of water (which is typically filled with prey like fish or krill). So their expansive gulp could easily engulf a diver. I have never heard of this happening before with humans.”

Another biologist by the name of Hector Guzman also chipped in his two cents on the subject. He spoke to Live Science about “bait balls,” which is when fish clump together in a protective sphere. He said, “Bait balls can form in open water as well as near the bottom, and whales start by feeding bottom-up in many areas. They may not see an object [such as a diver].”

Still, all of this information was academic, really: none of it would have helped Packard in his moment of disaster. He wasn’t thinking about how unlikely this situation was, nor was he wondering why the whale had swallowed him. Rather, he was confronting the very real possibility that he was about to die.

Packard told Live Science he reckoned half a minute passed with him trapped inside the whale’s mouth. It must have felt like an age, with each second passing representing less hope of ever escaping. He looked done for. But, as it turns out, the whale wasn’t exactly comfortable either. In fact, it wanted to get rid of the diver just as much as the man himself wanted to escape.

Packard was wearing a scuba respirator when this happened, and he was awake for all of it. He remembers what happened very clearly. Basically, after 30 or so seconds, the whale swam up to the surface and spat him out. The lobster diver told Cape Cod Times, “I saw light, and he started throwing his head side to side, and the next thing I knew I was outside [in the water].”

Packard’s colleague Josiah Mayo had been watching all this helplessly from the boat, presumably in a great deal of despair. He was looking for bubbles in the water, any sign that Packard was all right. And when he eventually saw him floating up to the surface, he rushed to get him aboard the boat.

Mayo pulled his stricken colleague into the boat and immediately set off back to land as quickly as he could. He also made a radio call requesting help. That meant when they arrived back to the shore, an ambulance was ready to take the injured Packard to hospital. He was hurt, but, amazingly, not too badly.

Jooke Robbins is a humpback whale expert, and he seemed really surprised that this happened at all. Speaking to the Cape Cod Times, he claimed humpbacks tended not to be hostile toward humans. He said, “Based on what was described, this would have to be a mistake and an accident on the part of the humpback.”

An incident such as this one was really rare, Dr. Robbins claimed. It may even be the first of its kind. Humpbacks’ food pipes are really narrow and tight, so a human being could never slide down one. That means they definitely don’t make a habit of gobbling up fully grown men.

Dr. Robbins suspects something like this has never happened before. In other words, Packard may have been the first human being to be swallowed up by a humpback. As the academic remarked, “It is not something I have heard happening before. So many things would have had to happen to end up in the path of a feeding whale.”

Charles “Stormy” Mayo is another whale expert, and he agrees with Dr. Robbins. Incidentally, Stormy is the dad of Josiah, Packard’s crew mate. He said, “People direct-dive on [humpbacks] in the tropics, not here. In those places I’m not aware of a single incident of people having problems with them.”

Stormy went on to back up his son’s colleague, describing him to the Cape Cod Times as a “perfect pro”. He added, “Packard is a smart guy and an exceptional diver. For that to happen to him, you can be sure he did everything he was supposed to do.” That maybe won’t reassure the diver’s wife, who reportedly really wants him to get a new job! The lobster-catcher, though, is determined to keep doing what he knows best.

Packard’s experience with the whale was obviously a harrowing one, but it has still served him in a way. The story caused such a stir that he’s gained a degree of fame. This culminated in an appearance alongside his crewmate on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he spoke about what happened.

The segment was largely played for laughs, and it saw Packard placed inside the mouth of a fake whale. Upon seeing this, Kimmel joked, “I heard you freaked out a little when you saw it.” Packard replied, “I did. I thought about it, and I was like, ‘No way am I getting in that. I’m going back to Cape Cod.’”

Packard went on to say he overcame his reluctance to sit in the fake whale. He said, “But then I thought about it harder and I said, ‘You know what? It’s the perfect celebration of life. I survived.’” He also corrected Kimmel when the host claimed he’d been “swallowed” by the real-life whale. He jokingly hit back, “I wasn’t swallowed, Jimmy. I was in his mouth. Get that straight.”

Kimmel replied, “I got a show to do, and I’m going with swallowed. I guess there is a difference. Because if you were swallowed, you would have come out the other end.” It was all a light-hearted affair, but it did get more serious when Packard actually relayed his grueling story from the start.

Packard’s account ended with a joke, though. “I want to apologize to the whale for getting in his way,” he quipped. “And I won’t ever do it again.” Here’s hoping he’s right about that! After a life that’s seen him survive both a plane crash and being engulfed by a sea beast, by the law of averages Packard should be due a quieter and more uneventful life from now on.