whale swallows man who wears red and was riding a yellow packraft / kayak

“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.

Man on kayak in sea moments before being swallowed by whale

The moment the whale first emerges next to the young man

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.

whale emerges from sea and opens mouth to swallow man on kayak or packraft

The whale takes Adrián Simancas into its mouth, and submerges below the sea

“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.

whale submerges with man and boat in its mouth

Adrián Simancas is spat out by the whale

“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.”

whale spits out man and then spits out yellow kayak

The whale spits out the boat, remerges and then sinks beneath the water

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.

The post VIDEO: Whale swallows – then spits out – boater appeared first on Marine Industry News.