‘In The Whale’ Film Event At Chatham Orpheum Jan. 11

The subtitle of “In the Whale,” an award-winning feature length film by David Abel and Andy Laub, is “The Greatest Fish Story Ever Told.”

Audience members will heartily agree with that assessment after viewing this whale of a tale.

On the morning of June 11, 2021 Wellfleet commercial lobster diver Michael Packard was plying his underwater trade off the coast of Provincetown when he found himself where nobody wants to be.

Packard was inside the enormous mouth of a humpback whale.

He not only survived his unimaginable ordeal, he was back in the water only three weeks later.

On Thursday, Jan. 11 Packard and Abel will both be in attendance at a screening of “In the Whale” at the Chatham Orpheum Theater. A 6:30 p.m. reception will precede the film, and showtime will be at 7 p.m. A Q&A will take place with Abel and Packard after the film.

Packard was diving for lobsters off his boat, the J a’n J, one morning when suddenly he felt what he described as a huge shove. Then everything went black. He had just enough time to realize he was about to die and to think of his sons before the whale, apparently not thrilled with the situation, surfaced and flung Packard from its mouth in front of several stunned witnesses. He had suffered some soft tissue damage, but was otherwise uninjured. It wasn’t until he was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital that the magnitude of the experience really struck him.

“When I really realized that I had survived, in the ambulance, I was so grateful and overwhelmed,” Packard remembered. “The tech was like, ‘It’s going to be alright,’ and all I could say was, ‘That’s why I’m crying.’”

Three weeks later, Packard was back in the water off Herring Cove Beach. Wearing a leg brace under his dry suit, he went on doing what he loves to do.

Did his brush with death in the mouth of an undersea creature change the way he views his work? Does he worry now, as he searches for lobsters on the sandy ocean floor?

“No, I don’t worry, because I wouldn’t be able to do my job,” Packard said. “I put it out of my mind. I do have concern, absolutely, about my mortality and what it would do to my kids, my wife, my mother. But this is what defines me, and it makes me happy. It pushes away those dark thoughts, being underwater and being a hunter-gatherer, accomplishing and doing things nobody else does.”

Filmmaker David Abel vividly remembers when he first heard about Packard’s experience. A reporter for The Boston Globe, Abel was on the Cape when he was asked to look into the story.

“I had recently completed a film called ‘Entangled’ about North Atlantic right whales, and another called ‘Lobster Wars,’ about the impact of climate change on the lobster industry, and all of a sudden here was a collision between a lobsterman and a whale,” Abel said. “Of course I was immediately interested. I was assigned to cover environmental issues and marine issues for The Globe, and I was asked to look into this story. My editor suspected at first that it was something to debunk.”

Abel did his best to debunk the story, interviewing as many people as he possibly could who knew Packard. He spoke with his mother, his sisters, the fishermen who claimed to have pulled him out of the water after his encounter, and Packard himself. Abel even managed to gain access to the 911 recording made immediately following the incident. Soon he was a believer, and had to inform his editor at The Globe that the incredible story of Packard and the whale appeared to be no mere fish tale.

Packard’s incredible encounter and survival was immediately the talk of Cape Cod. Abel said when he mulled over the notion of making a film about Packard’s experience, he thought, how do you tell a story that’s already been told by so many people?

“This was the launching point of the story,” Abel said. “Really it’s a portrait of one of the last remaining commercial lobster divers on the Cape, maybe in all of New England. He obviously is a fascinating character on many levels, but after spending as much time as I did with Michael Packard working on this film, I see it ultimately as a love story. A fisherman’s love for the sea, a lobster diver’s love for the bottom, a father’s love for his kids, a son’s love for his mother, a husband’s love for his wife. It’s that love ultimately that gets him through the most harrowing thing a human could experience, suddenly being inside the mouth of another creature.”

As for Packard, he is happiest back on the water, away from the attention which his story inspired.

“It’s the solitude I love, the nature, the primal hunter-gatherer instinct, utilizing that and feeling like I live in the old days,” Packard said. “I have to think and plot, always thinking about the next move, what I can do better. Being underwater is hard to describe. You're in a completely different world. To be able to make a living doing what you love so much — it’s so special.”

“In the Whale: The Greatest Fish Story Ever Told” starts at 7 p.m. at The Chatham Orpheum Theater on Thursday, Jan. 11, following a 6:30 p.m. reception. A Q&A with Michael Packard and David Abel will follow. Tickets are available now at the box office or at chathamorpheum.org/upcoming-events. For more information about the film and about Abel’s other films, visit www.inthewhalefilm.com/.