Could a whale really swallow a human? A marine scientist says yes

Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water, along comes Whalefall.

Based on Daniel Kraus's 2023 novel, the thriller follows Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams), a young scuba diver who attempts to shake off the grief of his father's recent passing with a dive.

But his swim turns dangerous when Jay's diving gear becomes tangled with a giant squid that has been marked as lunch by a hungry sperm whale, and Jay is swallowed with his mollusc companion. 

Stuck in the belly of a whale, Jay must figure out a way to escape in 60 minutes before the oxygen in his scuba tank runs out.

When the trailer for Brian Duffield's Whalefall film adaptation hit the internet this year, fans were thrilled to see Kraus's story of grief and acceptance hit cinema screens.

But a question remained: Could a human actually be swallowed by a whale and survive?

Dr Vanessa Pirotta, a lecturer and whale scientist in the Marine Predator Research Group at Macquarie University, has written books on the gigantic creatures and addressed the National Press Club in 2025 on the importance of ocean research to our wider environment.

She's currently conducting Australian-led research as a part of the Sydney Offshore Megafauna Surveys to find out how many gentle giants we have in our waters.

We're talking about Whalefall. But before we dive into it, I must ask: what is your favourite whale fact?

Oh, God, where do I start? I think the one I love is that whales have belly buttons because they're mammals. They live birth.

Wow, how big is a whale belly button?

I've done many whale necropsies where I've measured a whale but I never thought to measure the actual width of the belly button. I would say, focusing on an adult whale, maybe it's like the size of a clenched fist.

One of my favourite things and most interesting things to do as a whale scientist is understanding, working with pathologists and vets, to understand why the animals died. It sounds completely morbid, but the only opportunity for me really to see and learn about whale anatomy is by investigating dead whales and it's really the most interesting thing in my life that I do.

I've got to ask you the question on everybody's mind. Could a human be eaten and swallowed by a whale?

This is the billion-dollar question. So, when we're talking about Whalefall, the movie, it's a sperm whale.They're a toothed whale, as opposed to the humpback whale or toothless whales. They have baleen plates, which are hair-like strands hanging from the roof of their mouth.

They're designed not to bite down on food but to engulf lots of tiny, tiny food and water and then get rid of the water out the side of their mouth.

So, what I'm trying to say is, the biology of the whale that we're dealing with in this movie, you could potentially as a human go down the throat but whether you make it alive or not, I don't think anyone knows that.

Full disclosure: I have not yet done a sperm whale necropsy, but a human could easily fit inside their mouth and potentially be sucked into their throat.

Incredible. In the movie, Austin Abram's character is accidentally swallowed while tangled up with a giant squid, which the whale is hunting. Could this situation ever happen in real life?

This is where the movie is doing my head in. That feeding behaviour would usually happen kilometres, at least a kilometre or so, underneath the ocean, so there's huge pressure. The animal is equipped for pressure. So technically, if a sperm whale was feeding at that shallow a depth, then potentially you could. The sperm whale wouldn't use its teeth to crunch you up and bite you and chew you like what we would be doing.

They would simply use the teeth to grab onto you, like it's doing with the squid. The teeth are there to be like a fork. So, I would say that that's why it's doing my head in because, A, it's not usual to see a sperm whale feeding at this depth and, B, how has it miraculously followed a giant squid all the way to the surface? The squid would have been gone by that stage.

Humans are not part of a whale's diet, I must point out. So, these animals are not targeting humans. A human would be dead and implode by the time they get down to that depth.

Abrams is also covered in the plastic and metal of his scuba gear. Would a whale not realise that was not viable sustenance?

If that did all happen at the subsurface, my assumption would be that the whale would probably bite onto the tank attached to him and instantly know that something's not right. 

There have been other divers that have been kayaking or swimming next to humpback whales or other baleen whales with no teeth, and these animals have had these people at least touch their mouths but realise very soon after that something wasn't right and then they usually open their mouth and eject whatever it is.

Those whales with the kayakers, those kayakers are simply basically hanging out where their dinner plate is and then the whales don't give a hoot about them. So, by no means is the whale targeting the humans.

There's never been a swallowing of a human, to my understanding.

Whales just want to eat. They don't want to hurt humans. They're not aggressive animals, are they?

Not necessarily, but nor is a shark. This is the thing. Whales just want to eat their food. That's what sharks just want to do, too. That's why there's so much anthropomorphising in these movies. But as a scientist, I welcome these movies. They're getting a whole generation of people to think about and educate them about these whales and the environment that we know so little about.

If this is showing us a fantastical version of what a whale's stomach would look like, what does a whale's digestive system look like? Do whales have the same kind of digestive acids that we do?

I've looked in many whale digestive systems and I can tell you they're slimy and they're not pretty and they stink. I don't think there'd be much air in there, although the dude is on scuba.

Yeah, he's got 60 minutes of oxygen in his tank.

They would have acids in their stomach. Sperm whales are famous for ambergris. Yeah. Whale vomit. So there probably is a whole heap of squid beaks in that stomach that are undigested because they can't digest them.

So, if hypothetically a human does make it to the stomach but things go wrong, could a whale potentially fully digest and expel a human?

OK, I've been asked lots of questions in my lifetime. But this one …

So, given the fact that this guy is inside a whale with a scuba tank, I would say the scuba tank would probably cause this whale to die. But if this dude was sucked in the whale without a scuba tank and just as a human, then there is potential for this guy to be broken down and passed out.

So, I would say the impeding factor here is the tank. But even before a tank could even get into a stomach of a whale, a whale is not dumb and would probably be like, 'What the hell is this? I'm used to eating things that are squishy, soft'.

Whalefall isn't just the name of the movie, it's a real scientific term — can you explain it to us?

See, this is again another star, in my opinion, for this movie because now I get to tell you what it is.

Whalefall is essentially when a whale dies, it will float to the surface and for a period of time sharks or other animals will break it down. Then the animal will fall to the bottom of the ocean, moving a whole heap of nutrients and carbon with it. So, even in death, whales will transfer carbon from our atmosphere down to the deepest part of the oceans and lock it away.

We've got to thank whales for so much. Whales are environmentally and economically important alive and even more so environmentally important in death.

Is there a reason we're behind in knowing about whales or is there a reason we don't know more than we should?

Yes, because so much of the world is focused on what's above and not below and deep-sea research and research on whales is very expensive.

So, when it comes to learning about our deep blue, we know so little. In fact, we know more about space than we do about whales in terms of their environment, rather. Someone will eat me alive for saying that. So if anything, a nice silver lining is the fact that people learn about whalefalls and the role of whales and their ecosystem.

What do you think people should know about whales that is largely unknown at this moment?

They're so environmentally, economically important, and their whale poo drives the movement of iron — it's called the iron pump — around the ocean. So, we have whales to thank for the functioning, healthy ecosystems that we enjoy.

But also, we can do our role for whales, and especially humpback whales, making sure that we don't remove krill from the ocean because we need to keep their food there. If you're a little kid, I always say don't release your balloons at birthday parties. If you're an adult, don't buy krill oil tablets.

Our actions for these animals can be simple, but we need to have them front of mind, not out of sight. What is it? Out of sight, out of mind? In this case, it takes a very popular movie so that we can connect and learn so much, and that's what I absolutely love about Hollywood in this case.

This interview is lightly edited for clarity and brevity. Whalefall is in Australian cinemas now.