A man was briefly swallowed up in the mouth of a humpback whale while kayaking off the coast of southern Chile in an astounding moment caught on video.
Adrián Simancas was kayaking with his father, Dell, near the San Isidro Lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan when the whale surfaced directly underneath where Simancas was sitting in his boat.
“At first, I thought I had died. It was like, of course, a lot of terror,” Simancas said in a video interview with the Associated Press afterward in Punta Arenas.
“I thought, ‘No, no, there was nothing I could do.’
Fortunately, the whale thought better of it and spit the kayaker right out again.
Explained Danny Groves, with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, and it’s “highly likely this whale was simply going about his or her daily routine unaware that someone in a small boat was nearby.”
Phew.