In the Biblical book of the same name, a penitent Jonah — having refused to spread the message of the Lord in the wicked, godless Assyrian city of Nineveh — spends three days and three nights in the belly of a monstrous fish after being cast into the water by his shipmates when it is discovered that he had invited the Lord’s wrath upon them. Few people have experienced the specific trials of Jonah, except maybe South African tour operator Rainer Schimpf, who found himself partially enclosed within the mouth of a whale while diving.
Schimpf was diving off the coast of Port Elizabeth with a group that were photographing sharks when a Bryde’s whale came up through the feeding frenzy that was going on and scooped him up into its mouth. Schimpf told Today that he knew straight away what was going on. “I instantly knew it was a whale because there was a pressure on my hip which increased slightly to a point where it stopped,” he said. “Had it been a shark it would have been two of me and I don’t think that I would have seen anything again.” Grim but ultimately true.
Schimpf was quickly spat back out, but a photographer on another boat managed to capture a series of images of the ordeal, which most prominently includes Schimpf with his ass dangling out of a whale’s mouth, which you can see below:
[jwplayer DBCInD64]
Bryde’s whales are close relatives of humpbacks and blue whales, and have been documented growing to over 15 metres in length.
As a result of this incident, some industrious soul on Wikipedia has already seen fit to update the article on Jonah, believing that this encounter constitutes a piece of evidence that supports the Biblical story:
Let’s see how long that one manages to stay on the page before it’s deleted.
