Kayaker accidentally shields shark’s prey and then becomes target himself, video shows
A kayaker fishing for tuna off the coast of New Zealand saw splashes on the horizon — and quickly found himself involved in a high-stakes chase, video shows.
“I saw some surface activity in the distance,” Greg Potter told the New Zealand outlet Newshub. He was fishing for tuna from a pedal kayak about 6 miles offshore from East Cape at the time. “Thinking it was tuna, I went to approach it,” he said.
But “this was no tuna,” he told the outlet, “it was a huge shark chasing a seal.”
Potter caught the encounter on video and shared it on his YouTube channel, GP Fishing Adventures. The video shows something splashing a little ways away. The camera zooms in on a mid-sized gray seal that looks like it’s being thrown around.
A second, larger shape leaps out of the water after the prey, the video shows. The shark launches itself at the seal, trying to bite it several times. The pair disappear underwater and surface closer to the camera.
“It wasn’t a real shock to me at first ... I was more excited and in awe of what was going on in front of me,” Potter told Newshub.
“It’s unreal,” he said in the video. “Oh here they come!”
“The distance I had between myself and the shark was quickly closed when the seal decided my kayak would be a good hiding spot,” Potter wrote in the YouTube video description.
The video cuts to a different camera angle with Potter’s pedal kayak visible in the foreground. The seal surfaces on the right side of the kayak and moments later jumps out of the water on the left side, video shows.
Potter had accidentally interrupted the chase — and become a target himself.
“When the seal hid under the kayak, the shark came crashing up from underneath and smashed into the bottom of the kayak,” Potter told the New Zealand Herald. “Then they did another few laps around the kayak, and then a second time, the shark again smashed the underside of the kayak.”
The second ramming “almost knocked me out,” Potter told the New Zealand Herald.
Video footage shows the kayak lurch to one side as Potter’s foot slips off the pedal. The small boat rights itself quickly. Potter is seen pedaling away as the video ends.
“Once it did start getting a bit up and up close and personal, I realized this probably isn’t the best place to be,” Potter told the New Zealand Herald. “If it had managed to get me out of the kayak, that could have been a pretty disastrous ending. ... That does give me the chills thinking about that.”
Still, the encounter didn’t deter Potter from staying on the water and fishing for a while, he told Newshub.
Although he initially identified the shark as a great white, Potter later said it could have been a mako. “I’m still not 100% sure,” he wrote in the YouTube description.
GP Fishing Adventures did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Aug. 31.
East Cape is a peninsula on the northeastern coast of New Zealand’s North Island and about 320 miles southwest of Auckland.
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