Man 'swallowed' whole by whale only realised once it went dark
A man who had been snorkelling in the sea off the South African coast to film whales herding schools of sardines to more easily eat them briefly ended up becoming the meal himself when he got swallowed whole by a whale.
Rainer Schimpf said he didn't even realise he'd been swallowed whole until it all went dark around him, as he'd been focused on filming the 'sardine run'.
He managed to survive the ordeal without a scratch, but knows the difference between life and death for him was the whale not diving deep beneath the surface with him in its mouth.
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Being swallowed by a whale certainly makes for a dramatic story, which is possibly why there's a whole film about it coming out this year called Whalefall based on a book of the same name where our main character gets swallowed whole by a whale and has to get out before they drown.
Fortunately for the fish filming man the Bryde's whale which had swallowed him spat him back out again, and the entire experience was over before he had much chance to realise what had happened.
Schimpf explained that he'd been snorkelling near Port Elizabeth Harbour when his world went dark.
"It took less than two seconds. In that two seconds the first thing which I realised is that something grabbed me, pushed my hip together. I could feel the pressure and instantly knew it was a whale," he told Today of the bizarre and dangerous ordeal.
"My second thought was that obviously it can't swallow me, because the throat of the whale is not big enough to swallow a human. My next thought was it's most likely going to dive down with me."
"I held my breath and I was prepared, that's the only thing I could do. You can't fight a 15 ton animal, I was just holding on and bracing myself, calming myself down not to be panicked. It worked out, he spat me out."
When Rainer got home he discovered that the moderate inconvenience of being eaten alive hadn't left even a single mark on his body in the form of a bruise or scratch.
He also explained that he was glad that a whale was the animal that potentially ate him as it's 'much better that than a shark'.
Schimpf told Sky News he'd been so busy looking out for sharks which might decide to take a bite out of him when 'suddenly it got dark', and that's the point where he realised a whale had eaten him.
He knew that if the whale dived then he'd die because he was just out snorkelling and didn't have the lengthy air supply to survive being dragged underwater, so it was very much for the best that shortly after being eaten he was spat back out again.
Another man had a similar brush with fate when he was swallowed by a whale - lobster fisherman Michael Packard was eaten off the Cape Cod coast when a whale came 'out of nowhere'.
Like Rainer, Michael was pretty much stuck hoping the animal would spit him out, and fortunately it did so.
Despite the near death experiences, neither man had been at all put off getting back into the water.
Topics: Animals, Weird, World News
Joe Harker