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They would have called him Jonah in a past life… When lobster diver Michael Packard found himself being swallowed up by a humpback whale he was convinced his time had come. But just as he was having what he assumed to be his final thoughts, the whale decided against it and spat him out. Packard was able to swim to safety after the incident, which was in June 2021. Since then, he has given a series of interviews about the death-defying episode. “[I was] trapped for about 30-40 seconds. Yes, I was almost convinced I was going to die that day,” he said in a Reddit Ask Me Anything. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” he said in a separate interview with the Cape Cod Times. “I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth,” Packard was 56 at the time, and initially thought he was inside a great white shark. However, he couldn’t feel any teeth and he hadn’t suffered any obvious wounds, and it dawned on him that the situation was far more biblical than that. “I was completely inside; it was completely black,” Packard said. “I thought to myself, ‘there’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.’ All I could think of was my boys — they’re 12 and 15 years old.” Experts think the incident was likely a freak accident, and that the humpback whales are not aggressive towards humans. (That puts them in a different category to orcas, which have spent the first half of 2023 exacting their revenge on humankind.) Jooke Robbins, director of Humpback Whale Studies at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, said: “Based on what was described, this would have to be a mistake and an accident on the part of the humpback.” When a humpback opens its mouth to feed, it billows out like a parachute, blocking the animal’s forward vision, which is why so many become entangled in fishing gear in their mouth and jaws, said Robbins. It isn’t even Packard’s first brush with death. The diver also managed to survive a plane crash in Costa Rica in 2001 in miraculous circumstances. The crash, which killed three people, saw Packard sustain “severe facial injuries and multiple broken long bones in his arms and legs”, according to a Cape Cod Times dispatch in 2001. A doctor who treated the survivors told the Associated Press: "They would not have survived another night at that site." As for the whale escape? Packard didn’t sustain any serious injuries, telling Reddit he was left with “soft tissue damage, nothing serious”. A close shave indeed. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A man working on construction for this November’s Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix has tragically died after suffering a “major laceration to the neck.” The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department were called to the Bellagio Fountains area on Saturday morning – at around 11:30am – after a worker was injured. The man, whose age has not been released, was transported to a local hospital but was later pronounced dead, as reported by ABC News. A spokesperson for the police confirmed the worker was involved in construction for the Las Vegas race circuit. The grand prix weekend is being held on the iconic Strip on 16-18 November. Further details are yet to be made public. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will investigate the incident, police said. The Independent has contacted the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Formula 1 for further comment. Preparation for the Las Vegas race has seen numerous roads closed while construction takes place, with the project as a whole costing an estimated $560m. The 3.8-mile track passes a host of famous Sin City landmarks, including the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and the new MGM Sphere. F1 is returning to Vegas for the first time since 1982, when the Caesars Palace Grand Prix was held in the car park of the famous hotel. The race takes place at 10pm local time (6am GMT) on Saturday 18 November. Read More The rise of Oscar Piastri: A genuine rival for Lando Norris at last ‘Shocker of a race’: Christian Horner pulls apart Sergio Perez’s display in Japan Christian Horner reveals Max Verstappen ambition ahead of Japan victory

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