The waters off Chilean Patagonia are known for their breathtaking beauty and abundant marine life. But on February 8, 2025, those same waters became the setting for a father’s worst nightmare—and his son’s most terrifying brush with death.
Adrián Simancas, 24, and his father Dell set out that afternoon for what they thought would be a peaceful kayaking expedition through the Strait of Magellan. They paddled inflatable kayaks across the choppy grey waters, with Dell mounting a camera on his vessel to capture the waves and scenery. The temperature was cool, the sky overcast, and the ocean stretched endlessly around them.
It was around 3 p.m. when everything changed in an instant.
Adrián felt something massive strike his kayak from behind. Before he could process what was happening, he turned his head and saw a blur of dark blue and white flash across his face. A slimy, textured surface pressed against his cheek. Then, in a moment that seemed to defy reality, everything went dark.
He was inside the mouth of a humpback whale.
The young man found himself completely submerged, pulled underwater by a force he couldn’t comprehend. He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t move. The darkness was absolute, and the pressure around him was overwhelming. In those few seconds that felt like an eternity, Adrián had one singular thought: this is how I die.
He had no idea how deep the whale was dragging him. No idea if he would ever surface again. No idea if his father could even see what had happened.
But then, just as suddenly as he’d been pulled under, something yanked him upward. His life vest, doing exactly what it was designed to do, fought against the ocean’s grip and pulled him toward the light. Two seconds after disappearing beneath the waves, Adrián broke the surface, gasping and disoriented. His yellow kayak bobbed up behind him.
From his own kayak just meters away, Dell had witnessed the entire horrifying sequence through his camera. He heard the crash and spun around—only to find his son had vanished. The water churned where Adrián had been just moments before. Then, miraculously, his son shot up from beneath the waves.
“Stay calm! Grab the boat!” Dell screamed, his voice cracking with fear and relief.
Adrián, still processing what had just happened, managed to pull himself back toward his kayak, his hands shaking and his mind racing.
Marine experts who later reviewed the footage concluded that the humpback whale was engaged in lunge feeding—a technique where whales accelerate toward schools of fish with their mouths wide open, engulfing massive amounts of water and prey. The whale hadn’t been hunting Adrián; it had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or perhaps more accurately, Adrián had been.
A humpback whale’s mouth can stretch up to 10 feet wide when fully opened during feeding. It’s an enormous, cavernous space capable of taking in tons of water. But despite this massive capacity, the whale’s throat is surprisingly small—roughly the size of a human fist. This biological limitation meant that even though Adrián had been momentarily engulfed, it was physically impossible for the whale to actually swallow him.
The whale had likely realized immediately that something was wrong—that the object in its mouth wasn’t fish—and released Adrián almost as quickly as it had scooped him up.
When asked about his experience later, Adrián said that while trapped inside the whale’s mouth, his mind flashed to the Disney movie Pinocchio, where the wooden puppet and his father Geppetto find themselves trapped inside the belly of a whale named Monstro. The parallel wasn’t lost on him—here he was, in the water with his own father, having just experienced something remarkably similar to that childhood tale.
The incident serves as a stark reminder of the unpredictable power of nature and the risks that come with venturing into wild waters inhabited by massive marine mammals. Humpback whales can weigh up to 40 tons and measure over 50 feet long. While they’re not aggressive toward humans and primarily feed on small fish and krill, their feeding behavior can be dangerous for anyone unfortunate enough to be in their path.
Despite the trauma of the experience, when asked if they would ever go kayaking again, both Adrián and Dell answered without hesitation and in perfect unison: “Of course.”
For them, the incident was a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with nature’s raw power—terrifying, yes, but also awe-inspiring. The sea had given them a story they’d never forget, and remarkably, it had given them back to each other unharmed.
Dell’s camera captured every second of those harrowing moments, providing documented proof of an encounter that most people would find impossible to believe. The footage shows the dark shape of the whale breaching near the kayaks, the sudden disappearance of Adrián, and his dramatic resurfacing moments later.
The Simancas family now has more than just memories of their Patagonian adventure. They have a story of survival, of the unpredictable nature of the ocean, and of a father and son who faced the unimaginable together—and lived to paddle another day.