A father captured the terrifying moment his son was swallowed by a humpback whale - only to be spat back out seconds later.
Dell Simancas and his 24-year-old son, Adrian, were paddling through the waters between South America and Antarctica at around 3PM on Saturday (February 8) when the father noticed unusually large waves that "seemed exciting".
Wanting to capture the moment, he began recording on his phone but then heard “what sounded like a strong wave hitting behind me," CNN reported.
Dell turned around and was hit with a chilling realization - his son had vanished. "I turned around, and I couldn’t see Adrian, and that was the only real moment of panic," he said, Metro reported.
Watch the moment below:Fortunately, Adrian resurfaced a few seconds later and launched back into the open water as a humpback whale spat him and his kayak out.
In the heart-stopping video shared online, Dell, who is a 49-year-old Venezuelan-born anesthetist who lives in Chile, can be heard shouting "Relax" in Spanish to his son and telling him to grab onto the boat so he can recover from the unbelievable experience.
Still in shock, Adrian recalled the surreal moment he was "swallowed" whole: "When I turned around, I felt on my face like a slimy texture; I saw colors like dark blue, white, something approaching from behind that closed… and sank me.
"At that moment, I thought there was nothing I could do, that I was going to die, I didn’t know what it was," he told the publication.
The 24-year-old shared that his life jacket pulled him back up and added: “Two seconds later I was back on the surface and then started understanding what happened."
Although humpback whales don’t eat humans, Adrian’s encounter was still a close call.
These massive creatures typically feed on small fish and krill, meaning the incident was likely an accident rather than an attack, according to wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta.
“The gentleman happened to be very close to the whale that was just going about feeding behavior. The man was not swallowed,” she said.
“These animals are not targeting human-sized prey. They don’t have the equipment to do what they need to do in order to devour a human,” she added, pointing to their narrow esophagus and lack of teeth.
But despite the harrowing experience, neither Adrian nor Dell has been scared away from the sea. The pair told the publication that they fully intend to return to kayaking in the freezing waters.