It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a…shark?
A surfer at a Florida beach was suddenly thrown off his board after an aptly-named spinner shark propelled itself into the air and knocked directly into the man’s head last week in an insane caught-on-video encounter.
Darren Kaye was surfing off the coast of New Smyrna Beach, an inlet northeast of Orlando that’s often crawling with sharks, when he found himself head to head with the apex predator.
Kaye had seen sharks milling about the waters near the shore and even witnessed a few attacks, so he kept an eye out while he paddled.
But the surfer didn’t think to check the air above him.
The spinner shark — which gets its name from its signature spinning leaps during feeds — suddenly went airborne directly in front of Kaye and smacked him in the head, knocking him off his board, wild footage of the close encounter shows.
“I was just really happy its mouth wasn’t open,” he told WFTV 9, noting spinner sharks jump out of the ocean while hunting fish.
Kaye said he had no idea what was happening when the hulking, sharp-toothed monster came at him.
“I got right back on that board and my pulse went to like 195 beats a minute in a second and I paddled as fast as I could like out of the way,” he told the Florida outlet.
He said the immediate impact felt more like being slammed by a car — a feeling he knows all too well.
“I have a scar on the side of my elbow from [being hit by a car] and that’s like what it felt like. It felt like getting hit by a car. It was really strong and powerful. They’re all muscle, you know,” he told the outlet.
Lucky for Kaye, spinner sharks aren’t known for having the strongest bite or being aggressive to humans. Other sharks observed frequenting the beach include the black tip shark and the bull shark, one of the most dangerous to people.
The passionate surfer wasn’t fazed by the unusual shark attack and headed right back to the beach where it happened.
“We surfed there the rest of the weekend, we surfed there this morning, we surfed there yesterday afternoon. We always have waves. We are lucky,” Kaye told the local station.
Summer is in full swing now, which means it’s also shark attack season on beaches across the East Coast.
Earlier this month, a 9-year-old girl nearly lost her hand during another — more traditional — shark attack in the Sunshine State, but surgeons were miraculously able to sew it back together.
Mere days later, a beachgoer in South Carolina was mauled by a shark near Hilton Head Island. She was airlifted to a hospital and treated for her injuries.
Read the full article here
