Laughing Boaters Turn Serious When Monstrous Great White Shark Lunges at Them

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A group of friends gets the shock of their lives while on a fishing trip. While on the water, they encounter a massive great white shark. A close-up video shows the terrifying moment when the shark comes out of the water and lunges at their boat.

Stalked by a Great White Shark

One of the fishermen filmed the video on a small boat off the coast of South Africa. They have a good time as they hook a large fish. However, they had no idea that a hungry predator stalks them.

Suddenly, they see a huge shadow following their fish. They realize it was a great white shark, one of the ocean’s most powerful and dangerous animals. Instead of panicking, however, they realize that they have a chance to use their fish as bait to see this massive oceanic predator!

Swinging their fish around on a rope, they lure the shark in closer, hoping for a close-up. The shark, which is bigger than their boat, lunges out of the water! It snaps at their boat, hoping to get the fish. It ultimately missed the fish but bit into a bag of bait that was hanging from the boat!

The fishermen are clearly amazed (as the plethora of audio bleeps shows) by the close encounter with the shark. The video ends with one of them saying: “That was insane!” For the group, it really was!

Are Great White Sharks Dangerous to Humans on Boats?

Great white sharks are the largest and most powerful predatory fish in the ocean by quite a long shot. As a fish, they will sometimes bite humans or boats out of curiosity or mistake, but as a general rule, it’s important to remember that great white sharks are not intentional man-eaters.

Most of the time, they are attracted by blood or fish in the water, which may lead to rare and scary encounters. However, they usually prefer to feed on sea mammals and are not interested in eating humans or boats.

Even if a human is in a small boat like a kayak, a great white is extremely unlikely to attack unless it thinks it can gain something from the attack, for example, a line of fish hanging in the water from the boat. For anyone on a larger boat, there isn’t a serious worry that a shark will tip it over; this isn’t like a scene from Jaws!

If you learn anything from this video, it’s that you probably shouldn’t entice a shark until it lunges at your boat!

Is It Normal Behavior for a Shark to Steal a Fisherman’s Catch?

It’s fairly common for a great white shark to try and snag a fish being reeled in by a fisherman. This behavior has been labeled as “shark stealing” or “shark depredation.” Due to their keen sense of smell, sharks can catch the scent of a fish as it wriggles on the line from a distance.

Other sharks that practice this type of behavior include tiger sharks, bull sharks, and other kinds of reef sharks. Skilled fishermen are aware of this and some utilize shark deterrent devices to keep them away.

In the case of the fishermen in this video, they baited the shark purposefully by waving the captured fish just above the water. While it is not normal behavior for a great white shark to actually lunge out of the water after a fisherman’s catch, these fishermen asked for it!