You’re gonna need a bigger boat.
Kayak fishing can be a relaxing experience, at least when you aren’t worried about potential shark attacks. The good news is that you don’t typically have to be on high alert for a sharp-toothed shark to make a run at you, considering the odds of an attack are so low.
What are the odds of getting attacked by a shark? The internet says it’s about 1 in 11.5 million, which means that you are more likely to die at the hands of one of these things below than a deep sea “Jaws-esque” encounter:
-Struck by lightning
-Food poisoning
-Champagne corks (look it up)
-Fireworks
But try telling that to the guy in this video, who was spending some time off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii in his fishing kayak. The novelty of fishing out of a small boat wears off when a Tiger shark comes up that’s likely the same size.
Tiger sharks are some of the largest predatory sharks out in the ocean. They can weigh upwards of 2,000 pounds and have measured in at 14 feet long. Translation: you don’t want to go to battle with one while seated in a kayak.
The guy in this footage handled it about as well as he could have. Calm waters quickly turned into a rapid fire of curse words and kayak rocking as the Tiger shark torpedoed out of the ocean and rammed right into the man’s boat. Miraculously, the boat stayed upright, and luckily, the shark didn’t come back for seconds.
Footage below first shows the scary encounter in real time, then plays it back in slow motion. If I’m being honest, the slow motion version still seems prety fast motion to me.
Check it out:
Unbelievable. I’ll go ahead and mark off “ocean kayak fishing” of my bucket list… because I don’t think the idea of a bucket list is to die while you are checking things off.
In classic internet fashion, there was a remix of the footage that came out. Someone matched up different styles of music that could not have matched the moment any better:
