A LOBSTER diver says he spent about 30 to 40 seconds in the mouth of a humpback whale on the morning June 11 as he was diving off Cape Cod in Massachusetts, the U.S.

Michael Packard told WBZ he was diving for lobsters off Provincetown when he said he felt a “huge bump” and “everything went dark” before he found himself in the whale’s mouth.

He wrote in a Facebook post that he was rescued by first responders after the whale released him, and he was not seriously injured.

“He’s just coming home from the hospital now,” Packard’s mother, Anne Packard, said in a phone interview. “He’s bruised up a bit, but he’s alright.”

Packard described the terrifying encounter in an interview with WBZ, in which he said he initially thought he had been bit by a shark but managed to escape when the whale came back to the surface.

“I get down to about 13.7 meters of water and all of a sudden I just feel this huge bump and everything goes dark,” he said. “I feel around and I realize there is no teeth, and I have felt really no great pain and then I realize that I’m in a whale’s mouth.”

He told WBZ that he thought he was going to die, and he was thinking about his wife and kids. Packard was diving off his boat, called “J’ an J,” which is named for his two sons, Jacob and Josiah, according to his mother.

But the whale went up to the surface and threw him into the air, he told the station. “I can’t believe it,” Packard said. “I can’t believe I get out of that and I’m here to tell it.”

Packard told WBZ a member of the crew on the J’ an J was tracking his bubbles as he dove, and he, along with the crew of another boat, helped pull him out of the water.

The Center for Coastal Studies, an organization based in Provincetown that researches marine mammals and ecosystems, said in a statement that Michael’s encounter with the whale was a “rare accident.”

(SD-Agencies)