Adrián Simancas was minding his own business, paddling through the Strait of Magellan, when suddenly—boom—he found himself inside the mouth of a humpback whale. And you thought Jaws was scary.
A now-viral video captured the absolutely insane moment when a humpback whale surfaced, swallowed Simancas and his kayak, and then, apparently deciding he wasn’t on the menu, spat him right back out.
Humpback whale swallows kayaker off Chile before releasing him. pic.twitter.com/UuUatMGUxN
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 13, 2025
Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime experience—both for Simancas and the whale.
The footage, taken by Simancas’ father, Dell, shows the young kayaker paddling in what looks like an inflatable kayak (as if this wasn’t already terrifying enough), when the massive whale suddenly breaches with its mouth wide open and gulp—kayaker gone. For a few seconds, Simancas completely disappeared as the whale dove back into the water. Then, as if realizing it had made a terrible mistake, the whale spat him out, sending both man and kayak bobbing back to the surface.
Honestly, it’s a miracle he came out of this unharmed. If this had been a great white shark, we’d be talking about a very different kind of story. But luckily for Simancas, humpback whales don’t have a taste for humans—just a habit of scooping up everything in their path.
Now, if you’re wondering what it feels like to get swallowed by a literal sea monster, Simancas himself told CNN that in those few moments, he genuinely thought it was game over. In the video, you can hear his dad shouting at him to “grab the boat” as he swims toward safety. That’s got to be the scariest swim of his life.
Of course, the internet is going wild over this, with many comparing it to the biblical story of Jonah or even Pinocchio. But unlike those tales, Simancas didn’t have to spend three days inside a whale before making his escape.
The moral of the story? Maybe don’t kayak right next to feeding humpback whales. Or, if you do, at least make sure someone’s filming, because you just might end up in one of the wildest viral videos of the year.
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