He Was Trapped in a Whale’s Mouth. Now He Says He Can “Totally Relate” to a New Thriller

A man trapped inside a whale sounds like a movie plot. For Michael Packard, it was a Friday morning at work. In June 2021, the lobster diver was off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, when a humpback whale scooped him into its mouth. Now a new movie, Whalefall, shows a diver in a similar fix. Packard has seen it, and the story hit close to home.

The dive began like any other. Packard, then 56 and a longtime lobster diver, was off Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown around 8 a.m. It was his second dive of the morning, and he was near the ocean floor, trying to catch lobsters. Then, he told the Cape Cod Times, he felt “this huge shove,” and everything went completely black. He had been scooped up, whole, into a humpback whale’s mouth.

Packard says he could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in its mouth. Trapped, all he could think about was his wife and two young sons. “This is how you die,” he told himself. Then the whale turned sharply upward. At the surface, it shook its head, and he saw daylight again. He was out. So why did a whale do this at all?

Experts Say the Whale Made a Rare Mistake, and Humpbacks Can’t Swallow People

Experts say a humpback whale cannot swallow a person. Humpbacks are filter feeders. They lunge through the water with their mouths wide open to scoop up schools of fish, then strain out the water through plates called baleen. Their mouths are huge, but their throats are too narrow for anything big. A diver can fit in the mouth, but can go no further.

Experts also say it was most likely an accident. Jooke Robbins, director of Humpback Whale Studies at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, told the Cape Cod Times it was “a mistake and an accident” on the whale’s part. Charles “Stormy” Mayo, a senior scientist at the same center, said such encounters are rare. He thinks the whale was feeding on small fish, likely sand lance.

That makes Packard’s story very unusual. In 2020, some kayakers believe a whale briefly scooped them up, for just seconds. Packard says he was inside for about 30 to 40 seconds. That kayak encounter is what author Daniel Kraus says mostly inspired his 2023 novel, Whalefall. The film itself is fiction. Which raises a question: how close does the film really come to his ordeal?

Whalefall Is Far Scarier Than What Packard Lived Through, but Some Moments Felt Just the Same

Whalefall is fiction, and it goes much further than real life. It is a survival thriller from 20th Century Studios. Austin Abrams stars as Jay Gardiner, a scuba diver, and Josh Brolin is also in the cast. The film is inspired by a 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus, who co-wrote the script. In the story, a sperm whale swallows Jay whole, and he must fight his way out. It opened in theaters on Oct. 16.

Packard joined Abrams and Brolin at a special preview in New York’s Times Square. He told CNN the trailer gave him “shiver bumps,” and he had a few beers first to soften what he might feel on screen. Afterward, he said he “could totally relate.” In his words, “I could feel the tongue of my whale contracting on me.” He also recognized the film’s tight space and helpless feeling.

Still, the real story and the movie are not the same. In the film, a sperm whale swallows the hero whole. Packard wants people to know he was not swallowed. He was inside a whale’s mouth, and a humpback’s throat is too narrow to let a person go further. His ordeal lasted about 30 to 40 seconds. The hero of the film is in far more danger. But Packard says some parts felt exactly the same.

Experts Say the Whale Meant No Harm, Yet the Fear Inside Still Felt Like the End

Packard’s life did not go back to normal after that morning. CNN reports he now shares his story often. The week after the incident, he went on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Today, at 62, he has come to accept being known for something so unbelievable. His boat, the Ja’n J, is named for his two sons, the same boys he thought of inside the whale.

Packard came out hurt, but alive. He told reporters he went home from Cape Cod Hospital that same day with a dislocated knee and soft tissue damage. His crewmate, Josiah Mayo, pulled him from the water. Packard was still breathing through his scuba gear. Jooke Robbins, of the Center for Coastal Studies, said she had no reason to doubt his story and that he may simply have been “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The strangest part of this story is how ordinary the whale’s behavior was. It was not hunting Packard. Experts believe it was feeding, and he was in the way. Yet for 30 to 40 seconds, he believed he was about to die. A new movie now plays on a similar fear. Packard sat through it, and what he recognized was not a monster. It was the helpless feeling of being held by something too big to fight.