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Angry Bull Shark Capsizes Kayak, Throwing Fisherman Into The Water [Video]

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 11:30 PST, Jul 2, 2015

A kayak fisherman in Florida recently got more than he bargained for when an angry bull shark capsized his boat, throwing him into the ocean in a dangerous moment that was caught on video.

Ben Chancey, a U.S. Coast Guard captain for fishing charters, experienced the shark encounter last week off the coast of Stuart, Florida, according to ABC News. Attempting to catch a goliath grouper from his kayak, Chancey found that several bull sharks had begun circling him, likely interested in the 15-pound-bait he was employing.

Chancey underestimated the fish, however, and when the grouper took his bait, it pulled the rod from his hands.

“Groupers normally swim below the sharks. But this grouper came up through the bull sharks and ate the bait. It was really aggressive,” he recalled.

Once the angler managed to recover the rod, the grouper spit out the bait, which was quickly taken by one of the bull sharks. At that point, Chancey says, the shark began to drag his kayak across the ocean, “spinning” him around.

The key moment in the encounter, however, came roughly 20-minutes into the fight with the bull shark, when it swam under his kayak and struck upwards, capsizing the boat and throwing Chancey from the hull. Landing on top of the shark, the angler at first attempted to get back aboard his kayak, but quickly realized that wasn’t possible. Though he was wearing a life jacket, he found himself hanging precariously on the side of the kayak, his legs swinging in water filled with sharks, as the Huffington Post notes.

“My feet were dangling on the side. And after hearing about all the shark attacks… I figured I had a better chance of swimming to [a support boat]… than sitting there with my feet dangling over the side.”

Though unusual, Chancey’s experience isn’t the only close shark encounter to be reported recently. Earlier this week, a researcher in Santa Cruz managed to photograph a group of young white sharks when they surrounded his kayak, even passing directly under it, as the Inquisitr previously reported.

In an effort to get out of the water quickly, Chancey swam to a nearby boat, where he was startled to realize that the bull shark was still hooked to the rod, which was attached to his boat. Though video of the incident did not capture the finale, the angler said that he eventually was able to land the shark that capsized his kayak.

[Image: Chew On This/YouTube via Twitter]

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