A whale swallowed me whole — this is how I survived

A kayaker who was swallowed whole by a humpback whale has described the "terror" of being trapped inside the whale's mouth.

"I thought I was dead," Adrián Simancas, 24, recalled, "I thought it had eaten me, that it had swallowed me."

“It was like, of course, a lot of terror,” he added.

Adrián was kayaking with his father, Dell Simancas, when the whale surfaced, trapping the young man and his boat in its mouth.

“It was probably out of curiosity that the whale had approached me or maybe to communicate something,” Adrián said.

The rare occurrence developed in Bahía El Águila on Saturday 5 February near the San Isidro Lighthouse in the Strait of Magellan, Punta Arenas.