Talk about the catch of the day. A kayaker had a close encounter with a humpback whale when he was briefly swallowed before being quickly released. The incident, caught on camera, quickly spread across the internet.
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Earlier this month, Adrián Simancas and his father, Dell, were kayaking in Bahía El Águila near the San Isidro Lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan when a humpback whale suddenly surfaced. In an astonishing moment, the massive creature briefly swallowed Adrián and his yellow kayak before releasing them unharmed.
Dell, just a few yards away, captured the moment on video while calmly encouraging his son to remain composed. Pretty easily done when you’re not the one in a whale’s mouth.
“Stay calm, stay calm,” he repeated, his voice steady, as his son emerged safely from the whale’s massive maw.
“I thought I was dead,” Adrián later admitted to the Associated Press. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.”
He recounted the sheer terror of those brief moments, admitting that his true fear struck only after resurfacing. It wasn’t for himself, but for his father—dreaded thoughts of the massive creature causing harm or the peril of succumbing to the icy waters.
Though the experience was harrowing, Dell stayed composed, balancing his own anxiety while filming and offering reassurance to his son.
“When I came up and started floating, I was scared that something might happen to my father too, that we wouldn’t reach the shore in time, or that I would get hypothermia,” Adrián told the AP.
Within moments of entering the water, Adrián reached his father’s kayak and was swiftly helped aboard. Despite the fright, both made it back to shore safely and unharmed with a whale of a tale.
The Internet Reacts to Wild Footage of Kayaker Swallowed by a Whale
Meanwhile, onlookers can’t get enough of the harrowing footage of the kayaker getting swallowed up by the whale. On Inside Edition‘s YouTube post about the footage, the comments are filled with astonished gawkers.
“I’m already afraid of the ocean, this made it worse,” one comment read. “Man experienced the Pinnochio simulator without realizing it,” another person joked. “Without this video people would say he was lying,” another comment pointed out.
The Strait of Magellan, located about 1,600 miles south of Santiago, Chile’s capital, is a popular tourist destination in Chilean Patagonia, offering plenty of adventure activities.
The region’s cold waters present challenges for those attempting to cross, even during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, with temperatures ranging from 39 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit.