Off the coast of Chilean Patagonia last week, a kayaker was swallowed whole by a humpback whale before escaping unharmed.
Footage from Saturday shows Adrián Simancas kayaking with his father, Dell, near Bahía El Águila when a humpback whale surfaced, mouth agape, engulfing the kayaker in his inflatable kayak.
The whale submerged briefly before resurfacing, releasing Simancas and his yellow kayak.
Dell, who filmed the event, urged his son to remain calm.
“Stay calm, stay calm,” the father said in Spanish after his son’s release.
“I thought I was dead,” Adrián told the Associated Press. “I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me.”
He described the initial seconds as terrifying, but his fear intensified after resurfacing, worrying about his father’s safety and the risk of hypothermia in the cold water.
“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 said.
Both kayakers safely reached shore without injury.
The Strait of Magellan, approximately 1,600 miles south of Santiago, Chile, is a popular destination for adventurous activities in Chilean Patagonia, though the frigid waters present challenges.
While whale attacks on humans are exceedingly rare in Chilean waters, whale fatalities from ship collisions have risen recently, and strandings have become a more frequent occurrence over the past decade.