by Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, June 5, 2026
Michael Packard prepares for a dive to the ocean floor. (Courtesy photo)
In June of 2021, David Abel, longtime environmental reporter for the Boston Globe, was assigned an incredible story—write about the 56-year-old fisherman who said he survived being in the mouth of a whale off the tip of Cape Cod. Like many others, Abel wrote the news story. Then he became intrigued by the survivor, Michael Packard, and he spent two years talking to him, his family, and his Provincetown community to create the award-winning documentary “In the Whale.” Abel will be at the Harvard Senior Center Tuesday, June 16, at 1 p.m. to show the full-length feature film and answer questions afterward.
According to news reports at the time, Packard was the region’s only remaining commercial lobster diver; most others had stopped because of the dangers, especially from an increasing number of sharks in the waters. On June 11, he and his longtime mate, Josiah Mayo, cast off around dawn and navigated to their diving grounds off Provincetown. Packard strapped on his scuba tank and dove down 45 feet to hunt on the seafloor.
Suddenly he felt a massive impact from behind and found himself in complete darkness. Because of his scuba equipment, he was able to keep breathing in the watery cavern, which he sensed was not a shark because there were no teeth. He realized he must be inside a whale’s massive mouth. It was 30 to 40 seconds later that the whale rose to the surface and spat Packard out. He was picked up by Mayo, who had been watching for bubbles from Packard’s tank. He said later he expected to die, and his thoughts in the moment were about his love for his family. Packard’s story made headlines all over the world.
In an online interview for Boston University College of Communication, where he has been a professor since 2022, Abel said his editor at the Globe assigned him to cover the story, telling him he thought it was a fake. “You have to debunk this,” he told him. After listening to the 911 tape and interviewing Packard, two eyewitnesses, and Packard’s mom and sisters, Abel told the Globe editors he thought the story was true. He wrote it up, and the story got a headline that Abel said was the best he’s ever had: “This Fish Story Isn’t Hard To Swallow.”
Abel said one of the reasons he was inclined to believe the story was that he knew and trusted Mayo, who was driving the boat while Packard dove. Abel had used Mayo in one of the scenes in his recently filmed documentary “Entangled.” When Mayo said he was an eyewitness and, in fact, the one who had pulled Packard out of the water, Abel thought it likely that the story was true.
When Abel asked whale scientists he knew from his work on “Entangled” if it was even possible for a whale to hold a human being in its mouth, they said it was rare but “absolutely conceivable.” A whale feeds with its mouth open, and when it accidentally scoops up something other than its food, it rises to the surface and spews it out.
After a few days off to let his bruised leg heal, Packard was out on the water again. It was the only life he knew, and he loved the sea. Several weeks after Abel wrote the story, Mayo encouraged him to go out fishing with him and Packard, and that led Abel to spend a lot more time with Packard. Abel began to see that “there was a deeper story” beyond the harrowing experience—“what happens after a human being experiences one of the most frightening things possible.” He set about learning every aspect of Packard’s life, and ultimately the documentary became a portrait film.
Packard had experienced tragedy early in his life. When he was 10, his older brother disappeared while hiking, and around the same time, his father walked out on the family. Packard and two sisters and their single mom struggled. He nearly drowned as a kid when he went out on his first fishing boat, and he survived a small-plane crash. He struggled with depression for many years. After being in the limelight in a media frenzy, Packard was in what Abel called “a whale of depression” when it was over. The sprain and bruising of his leg from pressure inside the whale’s mouth were nothing compared to his mental state.
But there was a lot of love in Packard too: love of fishing, of being underneath the water, of his Provincetown community, and of his family. Abel said, “It was this love of his two kids, his wife, his mom and sisters, and the larger family that pulled him through that moment,” and in his struggles afterward.
The movie has underwater shots, scenes of the fishing community, and interviews not only with Packard but with his mom, his sisters, and friends. It is, said Abel, “ultimately a love story.”
Because of the need to monitor seats so as not to exceed capacity, please call the senior center at 978-456-4120 to reserve a spot.