I would’ve liked to see the betting odds on this fight, because you have to think the tiger shark would be above and beyond the odds on favorite.
This poor sea turtle in Winderbandi, Australia was just minding its own business and enjoying the ocean life when an aggressive tiger shark decided that it wanted to try and make a meal out of the sea creature. Feel free to insert any “turtle based food” joke here, but I think I’m gonna go with turtle soup.
Why? Well, a couple of years ago I heard the term “in the soup” used to describe a pitcher during a baseball game that had loaded the bases with no outs recorded.
The phrase is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “in a bad situation; in trouble,” which fits perfectly within this situation involving this turtle and shark.
Plus, it works very well with the soup pun, so I can affirm that this sea turtle is effectively “in the turtle soup.” Alright, enough with “Whiskey Riff Definition Hour,” let’s get back to the story.
The video runs for about two minutes and looks to be condensed. There’s a good chance that this sea turtle was fighting for its life for quite a while. By the looks of it, the sea turtle either had prior experience in fending off attackers or it has a really good self defense instructor.
The footage from a drone above shows the shark menacingly circling the turtle while occasionally swimming towards the hard shelled reptile. Every time the shark goes in for the attack, the sea turtle times a counter-attack perfectly so that its shell takes the brunt of the bite.
Its incredibly impressive to see the sea turtle strategically time its shell turn over and over again. Though there are a couple of worrisome moments for the turtle, the shark never actually takes a chunk of the slippery reptile. I don’t know much about sea turtles, but it has to take a lot of core strength to tread water and repeatedly contort your body like that.
However, if your life depended on it, I can see how the sea turtle could have found the stamina to keep the defense against the tiger shark going.
Towards the end of the video, it even looks like the sea turtle turns the tables on the shark and goes after it. Though it is hard to tell, there’s a chance that the turtle even landed a bite on the shark’s tail.
Watch the incredible footage below, and spoiler alert, you can root for the turtle and not be upset at the ending:
