Video shows bull shark attack of Palm Beach fishing boat 8 times; bashes motor

They're gonna need a bigger boat, just in time for Shark Week.

A fishing boat after some cobia off the Florida coast recently was suddenly violently and repeatedly attacked by a bull shark, shaking the craft "like a bag of popcorn," according to fishing boat captain Carl Torresson of Slob City Charters out of Riviera Beach.

Josh Jorgensen, host of the popular BlacktipH Fishing YouTube channel. posted aerial footage to Instagram of what ended up being eight attacks that left the boat's engine with "astronomical" damage.

Here's what you need to know.

Whose fishing boat was attacked by the bull shark?

According to Jorgensen's post, he called Torresson with a heads-up.

“I was flying my drone at the beach and spotted two huge cobia swimming with a bull shark," he said. "Cobia is one of the best-tasting fish in the ocean. So I called my buddy Carl, and he raced over to try to catch them."

In Jorgensen's video two large cobia fish can be seen swimming above a circling bull shark. People on Torresson's boat can be seen casting for the fish when the shark apparently took offense.

Where did the bull shark attack the Florida fishing boat?

"This happened (off the coast of) Palm Beach, Florida," Jorgensen said in an email.

What did the bull shark do to the Florida fishing boat?

“I was following his boat with my drone and then all of a sudden the shark attacked his engines,” Jorgensen said in the video.

Jaws open, the shark can be seen aggressively ramming the back of the boat again and again, directly between the outboard motors, thrashing and biting. The entire boat rocked with the impacts.

“The shark attacked the boat five times, swam away and then came back for more,” Jorgensen said. “In total, the shark attacked Carl’s boat eight times.”

"I didn’t think a shark could actually shake a boat like that," Torresson said in the video. "The boat was shaking like a bag of popcorn. Like literally, I was shaking like an earthquake. I was like, what’s going on? I went back there and I noticed it was a shark doing it. I’m like, are you kidding me? This is like a ride from Universal Studios.”

How badly did the shark damage the fishing boat?

After the boat arrived back at the dock, Torresson inspected the damage to find the engines ruined.

“We’re thinking, you know, maybe he grabbed the propeller,” he said. “We weren’t expecting the damage that we had when we got back to the dock, and it was just astronomical. The whole middle of the engine’s completely ripped out. The trim tab’s broken."

But the engines weren't permanently damaged. "The engine was salvageable," Jorgensen wrote. "Carl had to buy new parts for it."

Are bull sharks dangerous?

Only three sharks regularly attack humans, according to National Geographic: the massive great white, the tiger shark, and the bull shark.

Bull sharks, a mid-size predatory shark that can grow to 7-11 feet and between 200 and 500 pounds, get their name from their short, blunt snouts and their habit of head-butting their prey before attacking. They prey on nearly everything including fish, dolphins, crustaceans and other sharks.

They are also considered to be the most dangerous sharks to humans because of their aggressive tendencies and their ability to survive in freshwater and navigate up rivers, according to the National Wildlife Foundation.

In June. a fisherman quickly rinsing his hands in the water was grabbed and pulled completely over the side of the boat into the water while fishing in the Everglades. A study in 2012 found that bull sharks have a greater bite force than great white sharks.

Earlier this year a 13-year-old girl was bitten multiple times on the Treasure Coast by a bull shark. In 2022, a 10-year-old boy vacationing in Florida had his leg amputated after he was attacked by what his family described as a bull shark. In a list of 47 years of global shark attack data compiled by Floridapanhandle.com, bull sharks tallied the second-most bites, with 175 attacks and an 18% kill rate.

While bull sharks prefer shallow coastal water, bull shark attacks on humans are very rare. "In a typical year, fewer than 20 people die by shark attack," the NWF said, "but more than 20 million sharks die in relation to the fishing industry.

Tracking the bites: New shark attack file shows lots of bites in Florida, deaths in South Africa

Why did the shark attack the fishing boat?

"To this day," Jorgensen said in an email. "I cannot give you an exact reason why the shark attacked the engines. Based on previous experiences of my own, sometimes these sharks just turn on an 'attack switch' and go nuts!

"I've had sharks do the same to my boat and rip apart the engines. The really scary thought is that if someone was swimming in the water or spearfishing, this shark would have 100% killed them. This is the kind of behavior that has fatal shark attacks," Jorgensen wrote.

Why do cobia swim with sharks?

Cobia, also known as crabeater, sergeantfish and ling, grow up to six feet long and 100 pounds and are found near structures such as buoys, shipwrecks and artificial reeds, according to NOAA Fisheries. Recreational fishermen like cobia because "it is a large, powerful fish that puts up a good fight and provides a tasty meal," NOAA said,

While it may seem counterproductive for a tasty fish to swim near an apex predator, cobia often follow sharks, manta rays and sea turtles to catch an easy dinner themselves. The larger predators feed on finfish, crustaceans and squid, and the cobia can pick up scraps of what's left behind or kicked up from the ocean floor.

Healthy cobia can evade sharks themselves, usually swimming above, off to the side or behind them, but an injured cobia will abruptly become fair game. Cobia fishermen often see their fresh cobia catch eaten right off the line by a shark, an event called "getting taxed" or "paying the tax man."

Who is Josh Jorgensen?

Jorgensen has been an avid fisherman since the age of 3 growing up in Windsor, Ontario. After he discovered saltwater fishing, he moved to Florida in 2011.

Jorgensen, who bills himself as an extreme angler with an appetite for "monster fish," runs the charter boat business BlacktipH (short for "blacktip hunter") out of Palm Beach Gardens.

Since 2008, Jorgensen has been the producer and host, with his brother Jake, of the BlacktipH YouTube channel which features exotic fishing destinations and attempts to catch monster fish while promoting catch-and-release fishing. Jorgensen has been featured in CNN and on Discovery, National Geographic, Shark Week, and more.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Shark attack on Florida fishing boat leaves dented, damaged engine