A man has miraculously survived three days inside the belly of a whale after he went missing at sea and was thought to have drowned.
Luigi Marquez was swallowed up by a whale
The Spanish fisherman identified as Luigi Marquez, was initially believed to have drowned at sea but he miraculously reappeared several days later after he went overboard during a violent storm off the coast of Spain last week.
According to the 56-year-old fisherman was lost at sea and believed to be dead after Spanish coastal guards found no living sign of him after days of research.
“This is truly a miracle! Saint Mary of Jesus has heard our prayers” his wife, Penelope Marquez, told local reporters. “I prayed and I prayed and I never lost faith, and the Lord has brought me back my precious Luigi”
Although the man’s survival story is already spectacular enough, the fisherman claims he was swallowed by a whale in which he stayed for three days and three nights, reminiscent of the story of Jonah in the bible.
“This great beast swallowed me the morning after the storm,” he told local reporters. “It is the most frightening thing I have ever lived. Everything was pitch black and I was shivering cold.
“The only thing that kept me alive where the raw fish I ate and the light from my waterproof watch, that is how I kept in touch with time. And the smell, I will never forget that horrible stench of putrid decomposition. I had to wash for three days before the odor went away.”
The man showed reporters how he ingeniously turned his trousers into a safety vest, thus saving his life
The man says he was “flushed away” nearly 72 hours after being swallowed up by the beast.
“It is not the first time in human history that such stories arise” explains marine biologist Juan Cristobal Miguel, at the University of San Petrina. “Only last year, two scuba divers off the coast of Portugal lived the same story after being accidentally swallowed by a blue whale. Fortunately, they were immediately expelled of the giant mammal’s body.
“It is surely extraordinary that this man survived in the belly of a blue whale for so long, he is obviously a very sturdy man and extremely lucky,”
The blue whale, which is the largest animal ever known to have lived, feeds almost exclusively on krill and can eat up to 40 million krill in a day. Although their sheer size is impressive, they are of no threat to human beings, admit experts.