A kayak fisherman in New Zealand had a chilling brush with a great white shark over the weekend, and he captured it all on video. Greg Potter, who lives on the North Island, was jigging for tuna in Waihau Bay on Aug. 26 when he suddenly found himself caught between a hungry shark and a fleeing seal. The shark rammed Potter’s kayak twice, nearly knocking him overboard and into the action.
A sponsored kayak angler and YouTuber, Potter shared footage of his close call with the shark on his GP Fishing Adventures channel. The video was filmed off the East Cape of New Zealand roughly six miles from the nearest coastline, according to The New Zealand Herald.
In the video’s caption, Potter explains that he was focused on fishing when he noticed a “feeding shark” on the water’s surface. He says he thinks it was a great white, but that he can’t be 100 percent sure it wasn’t a mako. Regardless, he quickly realized that the juvenile shark was hunting a seal, and he sat there filming from a distance while the seal swam for its life.
Towards the beginning of his video, the seal jumps and jukes as it’s chased by the shark. Around the 40-second mark, the shark attacks its prey from below and the seal flies completely out of the water, spinning and backflipping through the air. That’s when it notices Potter’s kayak, which is the only shelter in sight amid the open ocean.
“The distance I had between myself and the shark was quickly closed,” Potter explains, “when the seal decided my kayak would be a good hiding spot.”
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The seal then swims directly at and under Potter’s pedal-drive kayak while the shark follows close behind. Caught between predator and prey, Potter gets rammed twice by the shark. He has to brace himself with one hand so he doesn’t end up in the water. Looking a bit like a seal himself wearing black neoprene, Potter then hops on the pedals and gets out of there as quickly as he can.
“If it had managed to get me out of the kayak, that could have been a pretty disastrous ending,” Potter told The Herald. “I was dressed in full black, pretty much … I can only imagine what the shark would have made of my legs thrashing around.”