Watch: Tiger shark attacks kayak, angler thinks he knows why
An angler who survived a harrowing tiger shark attack on his kayak last May has shared footage of the encounter along with a possible explanation for the attack.
Scott Haraguchi had reeled in a grouper while fishing with a buddy off Kualoa, Oahu. He did not bleed the grouper and does not believe scent was a factor in the shark ramming his kayak.
Minutes later, as shown in the footage, the tiger shark surfaces off Haraguchi’s bow and slams into his kayak.
“There was a lot of speculation as to why a tiger shark would run full speed into a kayak,” Haraguchi stated via Instagram. “Hopefully this answers all those questions.”
Haraguchi captured the scene with a mounted GoPro that was documenting his fishing exploits. He told FTW Outdoors days afterward that the shark might have mistaken his kayak for a seal.
But in the footage he offers a different theory.
“The shark approaches the front of there kayak as if to ram it or scare it, instead of eat it,” Haraguchi begins. “And as it slides up the side of the kayak he realizes that it’s not tasting a seal or a whale, or something alive.”
Slow-motion footage, however, shows the large shark chomping on the kayak with much of its body out of the water.
Haraguchi and his companion remained in the area “with our limbs out of the water” for several minutes and eventually spotted a wounded seal, which Haraguchi points to in the footage.
He concluded: “I believe that the shark rammed me thinking that I was competition for its seal kill. What do you guys think?”
It’s impossible to know but tiger sharks, which can measure 20 feet, commonly prey on seals, turtles, fish, mollusks, and other critters.
They’re also implicated in the vast majority of shark attacks on humans in Hawaiian waters.