In the shark-filled waters off Cape Cod, Michael Packard has long tempted fate. 

For several months a year, Packard and his longtime mate, Josiah Mayo, cast off nearly every morning around dawn and navigate through the half-light to their diving grounds off Provincetown, the idiosyncratic, isolated community where they grew up at the tip of the Cape. Packard buckles on his scuba tank and plunges into the cold waters to hunt on the seafloor. 

As the region’s last-remaining commercial lobster diver, the aging father has had his share of harrowing experiences, which include close encounters with great whites, nearly drowning, and having to pull up the body of a fellow diver. He even survived a plane crash in the jungles of Costa Rica, where he ran a charter fishing business. But what happened to him on a routine dive during a clear June morning was something he never imagined possible, and many around the world refused to believe. 

In an experience of biblical proportions, Packard was engulfed by a humpback whale, caught in the watery cavity of its massive mouth. After some 30 seconds of a pitch-black captivity, in which he expected to die, he was spit out, fins first, to the surface, where Mayo and another fisherman rescued him. 

The publicity was similarly dizzying for the reclusive fisherman, whose survival story spread around the world in news dispatches. But what came after the limelight dimmed was even more significant for Packard.

NBC NEWS BOSTON

Jimmy Kimmel Interviews Man Swallowed By a Whale 

ABOUT FILMMAKERS

David Abel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covers climate change for The Boston Globe. He is also a professor of the practice at Boston University. Abel’s work has won an Edward R. Murrow Award, the Ernie Pyle Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Feature Reporting. His most recent film, “Entangled,” which was broadcast by PBS’s World Channel, was nominated for a 2022 Emmy, won a Jackson Wild award, known as the Oscars of nature films, and Best Feature Film at the International Wildlife Film Festival, among other awards. Abel previously co-directed and produced “Sacred Cod,” which was broadcast by the Discovery Channel. He also directed and produced two films about the Boston Marathon bombings, which were broadcast on BBC World News and Discovery Life. His other films include “Lobster War,” which won “Best New England Film'' at the Mystic Film Festival, and “Gladesmen: The Last of the Sawgrass Cowboys,” which won the Miami Film Festival’s Knight Made in Miami Award. Abel, who began learning to make films as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, is INUNDATION DISTRICT’s producer, director, writer, and cinematographer.

Andy Laub, founder and director of Andy Laub Films, has hiked more than 7,000 miles in search of compelling stories. From nature films to cultural documentaries, he has worked as a writer, cinematographer, editor, visual effects artist, expedition coordinator, and soundtrack composer for networks including the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, PBS World Channel, BBC World News, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. He co-produced, wrote, and edited “Entangled,” “Sacred Cod,” “Lobster War,” and “Gladesmen” with Abel. Laub’s other films have explored the urban boom in Mongolia, the application of ancient building traditions by Hopi Indians, wildlife in the Pyrenees, and a trek he made across the 1,200-mile Pacific Northwest Trail. His film, “As It Happens: Pacific Crest Trail,” has been viewed by more than a million people worldwide. Laub is IN THE WHALE’s producer, editor, writer, soundscape designer, and soundtrack director.