Whale of a tale: US man says humpback tried to eat him

NEW YORK • In an almost real-life take on Pinocchio, a lobster fisherman in the US says he was scooped into the mouth of a humpback whale, yet lived to tell the tale.

"I was in his closed mouth for about 30 to 40 seconds before he rose to the surface and spit me out," Mr Michael Packard wrote on Facebook, hours after his brush with the depths on Friday.

"A humpback whale tried to eat me," he added. "I am very bruised up but have no broken bones."

Mr Packard's big fish yarn began, he told local newspaper Cape Cod Times, when he was diving for lobster off the coast of Massachusetts state. "All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black," he said after leaving the hospital.

His first thought was that he had been attacked by a shark, but the lack of teeth and obvious wounds made him reconsider. Mr Packard began to struggle - but unlike in the Pinocchio story, there was no need to build a fire to escape.

"I saw light, and he started throwing his head side to side and the next thing I knew I was outside (in the water)," he told the paper.

Ms Jooke Robbins, director of humpback whale studies at the Centre for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, said she had no reason to doubt the account. "I didn't think it was a hoax because I knew the people involved... So I have every reason to believe what they say is true," she said, adding that she had never heard of an "accident" of this type.

"When they (whales) fish... they rush forward, open their mouth and engulf the fish and the water very quickly," she said, adding that whales have large mouths but their throats are so narrow they would not be able to swallow a human.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE