I SURVIVED GETTING SWALLOWED BY A WHALE
JULIE McSORLEY, 56, A PHYSICAL THERAPIST
I live with my husband, Tyrone, in San Luis Obispo, California, about four miles from the beach. Every few years, the humpback whales come into the bay for a few days while they’re migrating. In November 2020, the whales were around, so we took out our yellow double kayak to watch the wildlife. We paddled out the length of the pier and saw a huge number of seals and dolphins, and about 20 whales feeding on silverfish. It was incredible. They breached and
sprayed through their blowholes, and were so graceful and majestic. Each one is huge, about 15 metres long, and sometimes they turned their side fins so it looked like they were waving at us. That was really cute.
At the time, my friend Liz Cottriel was staying with us. We had met 28 years earlier, when she worked as a receptionist for my dad’s dental office. The morning after Tyrone and I saw the whales, I asked Liz if she wanted to go out on the water to check them out. It had been such a magnificent experience, and I wanted to share it with her.
“No way,” she said. She’s scared of whales and sharks, and was terrified the kayak would overturn while we were in it. I told her there was nothing to worry about, promising that the craft was super stable and that we could turn back any time. After some cajoling, I finally got her to agree to join me.
We got out on the water at about 8:30 the next morning, and there were already about 15 other kayakers and paddleboarders in the bay. It was warm for November, about 18 degrees Celsius, so we wore T-shirts and leggings. For the first half-hour, we didn’t see anything. Then I spotted two pairs of whales right past the pier, swimming toward us. We were in awe: it’s an amazing feeling to be so close to a creature that size.
When whales go down after
breaching, they leave what looks like an oil slick on the water. I figured if we paddled toward that spot, we’d be safe from the whales, since they’d just left. We followed them at a distance— or what I thought was a distance. I later found out that it’s recommended to keep 90 metres away, or about the length of a football field. We were probably more like 18 metres away.
I CAME SO CLOSE TO BEING INJURED OR KILLED. I AM MUCH MORE APPRECIATIVE OF LIFE NOW
All of a sudden, a tightly packed swarm of fish, known as a bait ball, started jumping out of the water into our kayak. Their movement sounded like crackling glass around us. At that moment, I knew we were too close. I was terrified. Then I felt the kayak lift out of the water—about two metres, we later learned—and tip back into the ocean. I figured the whale was going to drag us down somehow, and I had no idea how deep we’d be sucked underwater.
What I didn’t realise at the time was that Liz and I were in the whale’s mouth. It had engulfed my entire body except for my right arm and paddle. Liz, meanwhile, was looking up directly into the whale’s jaw—it was like a big white wall. She told me later she thought she was going to die. I was still worried about being sucked down by the vacuum, so I just kept thinking, I’ve got to get up. I’ve got to fight this. I’ve got to breathe.
Whales have enormous mouths but tiny throats. Anything they can’t swallow, they spit out. We were wearing life jackets, and soon we both popped up out of the water about a metre apart. The entire ordeal lasted only ten seconds, but to me it felt like an eternity.
A few people were nearby, and someone shot a video of the entire incident. Three or four people paddled over, including a retired firefighter who asked us if we were OK, and if we had all of our limbs. “You were in the whale’s mouth!” he told us. “We thought you were dead.” A few days later, I studied the video and saw how close I’d come to being injured or killed. I became so much more appreciative of life after that day.
There’s no way I’m getting that close to whales again. I want to respect their space. I’m now very aware of the power of nature and the ocean. And I believe that I would have died if it was my time to die. Lucky for me, it wasn’t.
That afternoon, when we finally got back to shore, Liz removed her T-shirt to dry it off—and five or six fish flopped out.
As told to Emily Landau ■