Man fishing in kayak's terrifying close encounter with shark caught on camera
Claire Reid
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/ Hawaii Nearshore Fishing
A man’s fishing trip took a terrifying turn after a tiger shark began to ram his kayak, narrowly missing the man's leg.
Fisherman Scott Haraguchi was out off the coast of Hawaii when he found himself caught up in the nightmarish situation. Check it out:
As he made his way through the water the tiger shark appeared out of the water to the left of the boat and began to batter the kayak with its body.
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In the footage, Haraguchi can be heard saying: "Tiger shark! Tiger shark rammed me!"
The footage was uploaded to YouTube on Sunday (May 14) by the channel Hawaii Nearshore Fishing, and has since clocked up more than 650,000 views.
Explaining what went on during the heart-stopping incident, Haraguchi said that he was out on the 'Windward side of O'ahu' which is part of the Hawaiian island chain and also home to the state capital Honolulu last Friday (May 12) and was 'less than two miles from shore' when the apex predator appeared.
“Heard a 'whooshing' sound, looked up and saw a wide brown thing on the side of the kayak,” he wrote. “Thought it was a turtle at first. Happened so fast.”
Haraguchi said it all happened so quickly that he didn’t even realise what was going on and that it was only when he got home and watched the footage back that he saw he had actually made physical contact with the shark.
He went on: “Didn't realise I took my left foot out of the water to brace myself from impact and actually pushed the shark's head off with it.
"If you asked me to do that again, even without the shark, I don't think I'd have that flexibility. I actually only thought the shark rammed the kayak until I saw the video at home.”
Fortunately, Haraguchi was unharmed in the incident and is even pretty impressed with the fact he managed to capture it all on camera.
He told WESH 2: “It was incredibly bad luck but incredibly good luck to capture it.”
Haraguchi has been flooded with comments from people who have been left reeling after watching the dramatic footage.
One person wrote: “I'm so glad that you are okay. I literally screamed when it attacked you. I probably would have passed out and my body found somewhere in the deep blue.”
Another commented: “I've never seen a tiger shark move and attack with such speed, quickness and velocity. Scary!”
While a third said: “Amazing how fast that attack was initiated. No time to do anything but panic.”