Adrián Simancas had been paddling for 2 hours within the calm however icy seas of the Strait of Magellan, off the coast of Chilean Patagonia, when one thing large emerged from the water and dragged him below.
“I saw dark blue and white colours before feeling a slimy texture brush against my face,” the 24-year-old advised the Guardian. “I closed my eyes to brace for impact, but it was soft, like being hit by a wave.”
In an extremely uncommon flip of occasions, Simancas had been sucked totally into the mouth of a humpback whale. He closed his eyes and held his breath.
“When its mouth closed around me and pulled me down, I felt like I was in a whirlpool, lying down and spinning around,”he stated. For a number of fleeting moments, his destiny was within the jaws of the 40-tonne cetacean. “If it had eaten me, I would’ve died. There was nothing I could do about it.”
The terrifying ordeal lasted only some seconds. Earlier than he knew it, Simancas felt himself being pulled as much as the floor by his lifejacket. Unharmed however shocked, he known as for his father, who was paddling alongside him – and who had captured the incident on the 360-degree digital camera mounted to his raft.
The video has since gone viral, prompting a wave of worldwide commentary playfully evaluating Simancas to figures together with Pinocchio and Jonah. However it has additionally fuelled some misinformation about whale behaviour, inflicting concern throughout the scientific group.
“Humpback whales have a small oesophagus and feed on small prey (small fish, krill), so they could not ‘devour’ or ‘swallow’ a human,” stated María José Pérez Álvarez, a marine biologist at Universidad de Chile and Base Millennium Institute. She added that humpback whales wouldn’t have enamel, however fairly brush-like plates they use to entice and filter their prey. “It could not have bitten him either,” she stated.
Though Simancas was unhurt, Pérez Álvarez cautions that human-whale interactions needs to be prevented in any respect prices: “A humpback whale is around 18 metres long. It could have hit him hard with some part of its body, even if unintentionally, and the person could have been injured.”
Kayakers within the space have additionally urged warning. Guillermo Meza operates an organization specialising in kayaking excursions and worries that Simancas had been too far out at sea.
“I would never have gone that far into the open sea on an inflatable raft,” he stated. He additionally warned that the 2 males had been far too near the whale. “We advise maintaining distances of more than 100 metres, and if they get close to us, we stay completely still,” he stated.
Chilean legislation stipulates that authorized sighting distances should be no less than 100 metres from any whale. Simancas and his father are each wildlife and outside lovers, and Simancas maintains that neither noticed the whale nor deliberately approached it.
“The sea was very calm. We were reaching the end of the bay when the whale appeared,” he stated. “I didn’t see any schools of fish or any type of strange movements. The whale lunged from behind. It was a total surprise.”
Simancas has practised pack rafting for a couple of yr. The inflatable raft folds into a conveyable backpack, permitting him to mix trekking with rafting, traversing each sea and land.
Celebrating the daddy’s birthday, the duo had began their journey at Fin de Camino, which marks the tip of the street on the continent, and one of many southernmost locations on the planet. Their deliberate route mixed rafting and trekking to a small island.
As one in every of Simancas’s paddles had been broken within the whale encounter, they turned again and navigated their method residence by holding their rafts collectively, with one manning the left and the opposite accountable for the precise paddle.
Simancas says that the expertise has left him with a deeper respect for nature, and that he’ll take even better security precautions in future – particularly, staying nearer to the shoreline.
“I felt blessed with a second chance to review the mistakes that led me to be there – not just in the expedition, but in life itself,” he says. However he gained’t be happening any extra rafting adventures this season: “I’ll wait until next year.”
