A Venezuelan kayaker who found himself inside the mouth of a humpback whale says he started to think how he might survive “like Pinocchio” before being spat back out.
As the BBC Mundo reports, Adrián Simancas (23) had been paddling with his father Dall through the Strait of Magellan, off Chile's Patagonian coastline when he felt something "hit me from behind, closing in on me and sinking me".
His father had fixed a camera to the kayak which captured the ordeal during some seconds before his son and kayak resurfaced.
A Brazilian wildlife expert says it may have been the size of the kayak which saved the young man.
"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," Simancas told BBC Mundo.
"I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I realised I was inside the whale's mouth," he said.
"I felt a slimy texture brush my face… "I wondered what I could do if it had swallowed me since I could no longer fight to stop it”.
As he was trying to think “about what to do next”, he began to feel himself rising toward the sea surface.
"I was a little afraid of whether I would be able to hold my breath because I didn't know how deep I was, and I felt like it took me a long time to come up.
I went up for two seconds, and finally I got to the surface and realised that it hadn't eaten me,”he said.
Brazilian conservationist Roched Jacobson Seba told the BBC that humpback whales have narrow throats designed for swallowing small fish and shrimp.
"They physically cannot swallow large objects like kayaks, tyres, or even big fish like tuna," he said.
The humpback was most likely feeding on a school of fish and hit the kayak by accident while surfacing, then spat it out as it was too large to swallow.
However, Jacobson Seba said that the encounter served as "an important reminder" to avoid using paddleboards, surfboards or other silent vessels in areas where whales usually swim.
Boats used for whale watching and research should always keep their engines running, as the noise helps whales to detect their presence, he said.
See the BBC Mundo interview here
