Scott Haraguchi was fishing less than two miles offshore from Kualoa on the northeast coast of Oahu when a tiger shark attacked his kayak. This was no mere bump to the boat, or the shark going for a dangling fish. You can see in the video the tiger shark makes a clear strike at Haraguchi’s bright-colored Ocean Kayak Trident Ultra.
In Haraguchi’s YouTube post, he mentions he, “Heard a ‘whooshing’ sound, looked up and saw a wide brown thing on the side of the kayak.
“Thought it was a turtle at first,” the angler goes on to explain. “Happened so fast. Didn’t realize I took my left foot out of the water to brace myself from impact and actually pushed the shark’s head off with it. If you asked me to do that again, even without the shark, I don’t think I’d have that flexibility. I actually only thought the shark rammed the kayak until I saw the video at home.”
In a news report on Hawaii’s KITV Haraguchi mentions he had just made a catch minutes earlier and forgotten to turn his GoPro off, which is likely the only reason we have the footage to gawk over. The angler also says after the aggressive encounter he noticed an injured seal near him, which could have been the reason the tiger shark took a lunge at his boat.
