Did a whale swallow a kayaker? The reality behind the viral video

A father-son duo kayaking off the coast of Chile has made waves after sharing a video of what seems to point out a humpback whale briefly scooping one in every of them into its mouth.

Adrián Simancas was kayaking within the Strait of Magellan in southern Chile on Saturday when the whale instantly surfaced and engulfed him, in line with the Related Press.

“I thought it had already eaten and swallowed me,” the 24-year-old later instructed the AP. “At first, when I thought I had died, it was of course a lot of terror, because I thought, no, no, there was nothing I could do.”

His father, Dell, occurred to be filming on the time and caught the entire incident on digital camera, from a protected distance. He instructed CNN en Español he began recording when he noticed “pretty waves that seemed exciting” — however there turned out to be way more beneath the floor.

The youthful Simancas instructed CNN that he felt a robust drive hit him from behind, lifting him up.

“When I turned around, I felt a slimy texture on my face,” Simancas mentioned. “I could see colors like dark blue and white approaching me from behind, closing around me and pulling me under.”

Dell’s video, posted by the AP, reveals the whale leaping up, then disappearing underwater with Simancas and his yellow inflatable kayak.

After a couple of seconds, each the kayak and its life-vest-clad passenger bobbed again to the floor. However Simancas says his reduction was shortly overtaken by worry that one thing would occur to his dad or that he would get hypothermia from being within the water.

Simancas managed to seize onto the boat and swim it over to his dad, who paddled them to security. As he mirrored on his expertise, he guessed the whale did not imply him any hurt.

“When I got out I understood that of course, it was probably out of curiosity that the whale had approached me, or maybe to communicate something,” he mentioned.

Whale consultants have one other concept.

A ‘one-in-a-million’ scenario 

Two researchers instructed NPR that the most probably rationalization is that Simancas occurred to be in the best way of a feeding whale — one which was hungry for krill and small fish, not a human.

“My guess is that the whale was just as surprised as the kayaker,” Dr. Jooke Robbins, director of the Humpback Whale Research Program on the Heart for Coastal Research in Massachusetts, wrote in an e-mail.

Humpback whales feed by shortly lunging by way of a college of fish with their mouths extensive open, then straining the water out by way of their baleen, the fringed plates they’ve inside their mouths as a substitute of tooth.

If one thing — or somebody — else mistakenly enters their path, that may be “unintentionally (and just momentarily) engulfed,” Robbins explains.

“I’m sure it closes its eyes so it doesn’t get damaged by anything, and I think this is one of those one-in-a-million situations where the fellow seemed to be at the wrong place at the wrong time,” mentioned Dr. Iain Kerr, the CEO of the whale conservation nonprofit Ocean Alliance.

Stories of such incidents are uncommon however not remarkable: In 2021, a Massachusetts lobster diver mentioned a humpback whale had scooped him up and spit him out.

However, in contrast to the Previous Testomony’s Jonah, these males did not spend three days and nights within the stomach of the whale — they did not even attain it, nor might they’ve.

Whales cannot swallow people 

Specialists say it is simply not attainable for a whale to swallow one thing as giant as an individual. Whereas their mouths are huge — as extensive as 10 toes — their throats are a lot smaller, roughly the dimensions of a human fist.

Kerr says humpback whales do not even wish to attempt, particularly contemplating doing so might result in a probably life-threatening jaw damage.

“They have no interest in eating us, hurting us,” he provides. “It’s not to their benefit. Many of these animals are living this life of energy balance — what energy does it take for me to catch my prey, et cetera.”

Nonetheless, consultants encourage people in any whale-prone areas to present the animals a large berth — within the U.S., federal regulation requires at the least 100 yards — for the sake of each species.

Whereas some whale populations are rebounding, Kerr says others are “dying sort of a death of 1,000 cuts” from threats like ship strikes, line entanglement and air pollution. And although Simancas’ video has made fairly a splash, Kerr says it is so much more durable to translate that focus into truly serving to whales.

“The reality is the oceans are downhill from everything and gravity never sleeps,” Kerr says. “I tend to say healthy whales, healthy oceans, healthy humans. So even if you don’t like whales, there’s still value in understanding what’s going on in our oceans, and whales are barometers of ocean health.”

He hopes this whale’s flip within the focus will encourage viewers to become involved, whether or not by studying extra concerning the dozens of various whale species or donating to a neighborhood ocean charity.

“The more you love something, the more you want to keep it, or keep it healthy,” he provides.