
Humpback whale swallows and spits out kayaker in incident captured on camera
CNN
A humpback whale briefly swallowed a 24-year-old kayaker last Saturday during a father-son excursion out on the icy waters around Chile’s southernmost Patagonia region.
A humpback whale briefly swallowed a 24-year-old kayaker last Saturday during a father-son excursion out on the icy waters around Chile’s southernmost Patagonia region. The terrifying moment, captured on camera by the kayaker’s father, showed the whale surfacing in the Strait of Magellan and gulping Adrian Simancas for a few moments before releasing him. In the video, verified by CNN, Adrian’s father, Dell, is heard yelling to his son, who had been spat out of the whale, to “grab the boat.” Adrian then swims towards his dad’s pack raft and holds onto it as they pull away. “I thought it swallowed me,” Adrian said in the video. Speaking to CNN en Español, Adrian explained what it felt like to be briefly engulfed by a humpback whale. “When I turned around, I felt on my face like a slimy texture; I saw colors like dark blue, white, something approaching from behind that closed… and sank me,” he said. “At that moment, I thought there was nothing I could do, that I was going to die, I didn’t know what it was.”