'I felt a slimy texture brush my face': Man describes being swallowed by whale

 

The first thing kayaker Adrián Simancas noticed after he was eaten by a whale was the slime.

"I spent a second realising I was inside the mouth of something, that maybe it had eaten me, that it could have been an orca or a sea monster," the 23-year-old told BBC Mundo.

Adrián had started to think how he might survive inside the humpback whale "like Pinocchio" - then the creature spat him back out.

The Venezuelan kayaker had been paddling through the Strait of Magellan, off Chile's Patagonian coast, with his father when he felt something "hit me from behind, closing in on me and sinking me".

His father, Dall, was able to capture the short-lived ordeal on video just metres away.

"I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I realised I was inside the whale's mouth," Adrián told the BBC.

"I felt a slimy texture brush my face," he recalled, adding that all he could see was dark blue and white.

"I wondered what I could do if it had swallowed me since I could no longer fight to stop it," he said.

"I had to think about what to do next."

But within seconds, Adrián started to feel as though he was rising toward the surface.

For Adrián, the experience was not just about survival - but he said felt he had received a "second chance" when the whale spat him out.

The "unique" experience in one of the most extreme places on Earth had "invited me to reflect on what I could have done better up until that point, and on the ways I can take advantage of the experience and appreciate it as well", he added.

But there is a simple reason he was able to escape the whale so quickly, according to a wildlife expert.

Humpback whales have narrow throats "about the size of a household pipe" designed for swallowing small fish and shrimp, Brazilian conservationist Roched Jacobson Seba told the BBC.

"They physically cannot swallow large objects like kayaks, tires, or even big fish like tuna," he said.

"Ultimately, the whale spit out the kayak because it was physically impossible to swallow."

The humpback whale likely engulfed Adrián by accident, Mr Seba suggested.

"The whale was likely feeding on a school of fish when it unintentionally scooped up the kayak along with its meal.

"When whales surface too quickly while feeding, they can accidentally hit or engulf objects

 in their path."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly50k8zypmo