“Oh, my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth. I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to swallow me.”

Commercial lobster diver Michael Packard was nearly swallowed by a humpback whale while searching for lobsters off the coast of Massachusetts. While that sounds like something out of a storybook, it’s not—and the lucky diver is alive to tell the astounding tale.

Packard knew something was wrong the moment the incident occurred, but he wasn’t sure what was happening to him, exactly. “I got down to about 45 feet of water, and all of a sudden I just felt this huge bump, and everything went dark,” Packard explained. “And I could sense that I was moving, and I was like, ‘”Oh, my God, did I just get bit by a shark?’ Then I felt around, and I realized there was no teeth and I had felt, really, no great pain,” Packard recalls. “And then I realized, ‘Oh, my God, I’m in a whale’s mouth. I’m in a whale’s mouth, and he’s trying to swallow me.’”[…]

More: Diver Nearly Swallowed by Humpback Whale Gets Spat Out Alive