Kayaker swallowed by the whale, he remembers feeling ‘viscous texture’ in his mouth

The first thing that Kayaker Adrián Simancas noticed after he was swallowed by a whale was the Lima.

“I spent a second realizing that I was inside the mouth of something, which I had eaten, that it could have been an orca or a marine monster,” the 23 -year -old told the BBC Mundo.

Adrián had begun to think about how he could survive inside the humpback whale “like Pinocchio”, then the creature spit it out.

The Venezuelan kayakist had been paddling through the Magellan Strait, in front of the Pathagic coast of Chile, with his father when he felt something “hit me from behind, closing and sinking me.”

His father, Dall, He could capture the short -lived test at only meters away.

“I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I realized that I was inside the whale mouth,” Adrián told the BBC.

“I felt that a viscous texture brushed my face,” he recalled, and added that everything I could see was dark and white blue.

“I wondered what I could do if I had swallowed since I could no longer fight to stop him,” he said.

“I had to think about what to do next.”

But in a matter of seconds, Adrián began to feel that he was coming to the surface.

“I was a little afraid of whether I could contain my breathing because I didn’t know how deep it was, and I felt that it took me a long time.

“I went up for two seconds, and finally I reached the surface and realized that I had not eaten.”

In Atenby Kayak, Adrián’s father, Dall, Syncas observed with disbelief.

The couple had just crossed Eagle Bay, along the coast from Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in Chile, when he heard a clash behind him. “When I turned around, I didn’t see Adrián.”

“I was worried about a second, until I saw him leave the sea,” said the 49 -year -old man.

“Then I saw something, a body, which I immediately interpreted how it is most likely to be a whale due to its size.”

Dall had fixed a camera on the back of his kayak to record the ascending waves, which captured his son’s remarkable experience.

When observing the images, Adrián, who moved with his father to Chile from Venezuela seven years ago in search of a better quality of life, was surprised to see how huge the whale had been.

“I hadn’t seen the moment when my back appears, and the fin is visible. I didn’t see it, I heard it. That made me nervous,” he said.

“But later, with the video, I realized that it actually appeared before me in such a large size that maybe I had seen it, I would have scared me even more.”

For Adrián, the experience was not only about survival, but said he had received a “second chance” when the whale spit it out.

The “unique” experience in one of the most extreme places on Earth “invited me to reflect on what could have done better until that moment, and about the ways in which I can take advantage of the experience and appreciate it too,” he added.

But there is a simple reason why he could escape the whale so fast, according to a wildlife expert.

The humpback whales have close throats “approximately the size of a domestic pipe” designed to swallow small fish and shrimp, said Brazilian conservationist Rochedon Jacobson Seba to the BBC.

“Physically they can’t swallow large objects such as kayaks, tires or even large fish like tuna,” he said.

“Ultimately, the whale spit the kayak because it was physically impossible to swallow.”

The humpback whale probably wrapped Adrián by accident, Seba suggested.

“The whale was probably feeding on a fish school when it involuntarily picked up the kayak along with its food.

“When whales arise too fast while feeding, they can accidentally hit or wrap objects on their way.”

He warned that the meeting served as “an important reminder” to avoid the use of palette tables, surf tables or other silent containers in areas where whales generally swim.

The ships used for the observation and investigation of whales should always keep their engines lit, he added, since noise helps whales to detect their presence.

Additional reports by Luis Barrucho and Maia Davies.