Shark attacks kayak off Hawaii coast in harrowing encounter caught on video
A shark attacked a man fishing from his kayak off the coast of Hawaii in a harrowing encounter that he caught on video. The man wasn't hurt in the brief attack.
Scott Haraguchi was fishing less than 2 miles off the island of Oahu around midday Friday. After he caught a fish, he told a local TV station he left his GoPro camera running.
"It was incredibly bad luck but incredibly good luck to capture it," Haraguchi told KITV.
In the video, which Haraguchi posted to YouTube, the shark is seen coming straight at the kayak and opening its large mouth right before ramming the small watercraft. Haraguchi screams as the shark's head slides along the side of the kayak and closer to him during the collision.
Haraguchi manages to kick the shark with his left foot, and it goes back into the water. He said later he initially thought the animal was a turtle before he realized he just had a close encounter with a shark.
"Tiger shark!" Haraguchi yells out in the video after the attack. "Tiger shark rammed me. Holy f-."
He wrote on YouTube that it all happened so fast he didn't realize exactly what happened until he checked out the GoPro footage at home.
"If you asked me to do that again, even without the shark, I don't think I'd have that flexibility," Haraguchi wrote on YouTube.
He told KITV he assumed the shark was looking for a wounded seal he spotted nearby.
"I'm thinking that the shark actually disabled and wounded the seal … was waiting for it to die, came back and thought I was the seal and attacked me instead," he told the station.
