​​Tiger Shark Rams Kayak, Fisherman Kicks It Away

A fisherman who was wearing a GoPro camera captured the chilling moment a tiger shark jumped out of the water and tried to take a bite out of his kayak. Fisherman Scott Haraguchi was paddling off the coast of Oahu when the huge shark bared its teeth and came at him so fast it sounded like "a boat heading towards me without a motor," he said.

"It was incredibly bad luck but incredibly good luck to capture it," Haraguchi told KITV. Read on to find out how he got rid of the shark, what happened next, and how common tiger shark attacks are. 

Haraguchi was kayaking about a mile offshore in shallow waters. He had turned his GoPro on after catching a fish and forgot to turn it off.  Suddenly, "I heard a whooshing that sounded like a boat heading towards me without the motor, and I looked up and I saw this big brown thing," Haraguchi told local station KITV.

"My brain thought it was a turtle, but then I got slammed by it and realized that it was a tiger shark."

Somehow he managed to kick the shark away from the kayak. In the footage, he can be heard shouting, "Tiger shark! Tiger shark rammed me! Holy…!" After dispatching the predator, he continued fishing.

Haraguchi said it's possible the shark thought his kayak was a seal. A few minutes after the attack, he saw a wounded seal nearby. "I'm thinking that the shark actually disabled and wounded the seal, let it die or was waiting for it to die, came back, thought I was the seal, and attacked me instead," he said.

Haraguchi told the station that he's planning to bring a partner on future fishing trips, and he's counting his blessings. "I realize that life is short, time is short on Earth, so make the most of it," he said.

The fisherman posted the footage on YouTube, commenting that he didn't know how he managed to kick the shark away, planting his shoe near its vulnerable eye. "If you asked me to do that again, even without the shark, I don't think I'd have that flexibility," he said.

"Talk about a jump scare," the GoPro company commented on YouTube. "So glad that you're okay." "Amazing how fast that attack was initiated. No time to do anything but panic," another commenter said.  

"Man, you're lucky it didn't flip you. I hope to never have an encounter like this when I'm out fishing," another wrote.  "I don't know if it's everywhere but here in California because of the sharks' habit of biting kayaks the color of yours, that color is known as 'Yum Yum yellow,'" another man said.

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Tiger sharks are the second-most-deadly predators after great white sharks, although attacks aren't common. Last summer, the Florida Museum launched an interactive map showing the number of unprovoked shark attacks worldwide.

The U.S. comes in first with 1,563 unprovoked attacks since 1580, followed by Australia (682) and South Africa (258).  In 2022, Florida was the world's shark bite capital, with 16 attacks reported. None of those were fatal, but two resulted in amputations.