Huge tiger shark bites kayak off Hawaii coast in wild video
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A terrifying video shows the moment a massive tiger shark attacked an unsuspecting angler fishing in Hawaii and took a bite out of his kayak.
The wild encounter took place Friday afternoon less than a mile off the coast of O’ahu.
Scott Haraguchi was catching fish in his kayak when he heard what he later described as a “whooshing sound” similar to that of a boat without a motor.
A moment later, the angler’s GoPro camera captured the chilling sight of a huge tiger shark crashing into the kayak and chomping its side.
The impact briefly knocks the kayak off balance, and its startled occupant screams in terror: “a tiger shark rammed me! Holy f—!”
Haraguchi said that he somehow managed to kick the toothy apex predator off his boat and resumed fishing.
It was not until he later reviewed the video at home that he realized how close he came to being mauled by the hungry intruder, which left teeth marks on his boat.
In a YouTube post accompanying his viral video, Haraguchi revealed that he initially mistook the “wide brown thing” he spotted on the side of his kayak for a turtle.
“[It] happened so fast. [I] didn’t realize I took my left foot out of the water to brace myself from impact and actually pushed the shark’s head off with it,” the lucky-to-be-alive angler recounted. “If you asked me to do that again, even without the shark, I don’t think I’d have that flexibility (sic).”
Haraguchi told the news station KITV4 that while he was not sure what led the shark to attack him, he speculated that the ocean dweller may have mistaken his kayak for a seal that he later observed in the area.
“I’m thinking that the shark disabled and wounded the seal…and was waiting for it to die, came back and thought I was the seal, and attacked me instead,” he said.
The angler said that while it was “bad luck” that he ended up on a collision course with the shark, he was lucky to have captured the incident on video, which has now drawn more than 88,000 views.
Haraguchi walked away from his heart-stopping ocean encounter shaken but physically unharmed.
He said the very close call served as an important reminder to him.
“I realize that life is short, time is short on earth,” he remarked. “Make the most of it, be nice to people.”
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