Modern Jonah is safe after ordeal in the jaws of a whale — yes, it really happened

By David Ian Klein June 13, 2021

On Friday, a man found himself inside the mouth of a whale.

No, it wasn’t an ancient Hebrew prophet fleeing a God-given quest to the Assyrian city of Nineveh.

This time it was a Cape Cod fisherman, Michael Packard, 56, diving for lobster off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis of the crisis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

To secure their catch, lobster divers have to descend deep down to the ocean’s sandy floor to locate the bottom-feeders. Packard, a licensed diver, is no stranger to such trips.

“I got down to about 45 feet of water, and all of a sudden I just felt this huge bump, and everything went dark,” Packard told Boston’s CBS channel, WBZ. “And I could sense that I was moving, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, did I just get bit by a shark?’”

Soon, however, he noticed the lack of teeth, and surmised it was a different monster of the deep, a humpback whale which can range between 43 and 59 ft depending on age and gender.

Packard hasn’t yet commented as to whether he feels any parallels to the biblical story of Jonah, Instead he says his thoughts were closer to home.

“I thought to myself, ‘there’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.’ All I could think of was my boys — they’re 12 and 15 years old,” he told the Cape Cod Times.

Packard estimated he spent about 30 seconds inside before the creature spit him back out.

Being swallowed by a humpback whale is an exceedingly rare occurrence according to experts. Enough so that it’s considered practically nonexistent.

“People direct dive on them (humpbacks) in the Tropics, not here. In those places I’m not aware of a single incident of people having problems with them,” Charles “Stormy” Mayo, a senior scientist and whale expert at the Center for Coastal Studies, told the Cape Cod Times.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount