Gonna need a bigger boat…
Not gonna lie, if you saw this video with no context, you would’ve thought it was a deleted scene from Jaws.
We’ve seen several videos of sharks over the years. People nearly getting their faces bitten off by the creatures while diving, sharks ramming into the side of boats, and people accidentally catching them while fishing for a completely different species.
However, I have NEVER seen a video of a shark leaping from the water, and landing directly on top of a boat…
And that’s exactly what happened here.
This one all went down during a fishing charter off the coast of Whitianga, New Zealand.
Ryan Churches, the owner of Churchy’s Charters NZ was the lucky one to catch it all on video.
As you can see in the wild footage, a MASSIVE Mako shark leaps from the water, and lands directly on top of the front end of the boat.
Needless to say, it’s a miracle that nobody was standing on that side of the vessel, and nobody, nor the shark, was harmed.
The caption to the video reads:
“MOMENT HUGE shark leaps onto front of fishing boat in New Zealand to the surprise of all on-board.
A group of people on a fishing charter off Whitianga, New Zealand, were startled and stunned when a large mako shark leaped out of the water and landed on the front of the boat.
The shark was unharmed.”
Check it out:
Mako Shark Sends Massachusetts Fishermen Running
We’ve seen a number of incidents involving fish jumping into boats, and injuring passengers on board here recently.
There was the 73-year-old woman who got impaled by a sailfish while on a fishing boat off the coast of Florida, the 400-pound spotted eagle ray that jumped into an Alabama family’s boat and hurt one of the passengers, and even a massive humpback whale recently jumped out of the water in Massachusetts and nearly landed right on top of a fishing boat.
Needless to say, these incidents can occur when you least expect it, and can result in severe injury.
And here we have another example.
A group of saltwater fishermen were fishing off the coast of Massachusetts, when all of a sudden, a mako shark they had just hooked flew out of the water, and landed in the boat.
You can see the fisherman fighting the Mako once he hooked it, as the rod is inside a fighting belt. It appears the shark couldn’t fight any longer, and came flying from up from the water and right back in.
You can hear everybody say:
“Oh sh*t!”
Yeah, I probably would be too…
However, the fisherman continues to fight, and as the Mako is coming in fast, it comes flying up in the air once again, but this time it lands in the back of the boat.
The fishermen on board then scatter as quickly as possible, but luckily enough, nobody was injured during the wild event.
According to NOAA Fisheries, the federal government recently banned keeping Atlantic shortfin Makos back in July, so the fishermen couldn’t kill it.
The site states that anglers must release any Mako they catch:
“Whether the shark is dead or alive at haulback.”
