While most people would be terrified upon seeing a shark’s fin appear in the water, a man decided to jump in with confidence and swim with it.
The unknown man was under the impression that what he saw under the water was a basking shark, a marine specie which is often described as a ‘gentle giant’.
Basking sharks are the second-largest fish to swim the world’s oceans and can be spotted in the north and the south Pacific Ocean, to southern Australia and around New Zealand.
The gentle sharks only eat zooplankton making them harmless to humans. No wonder the man in the video jumped into the water to swim with it.
It wasn’t until he’d already taken the dive that his friend on board realized it wasn’t the basking shark they thought it was and shouted to warn his friend.
Shortly after jumping in, the man says ‘that was a bad idea’, and starts swimming back to the boat. His friend casually shouts to him, ‘That’s not a basking shark, dude’.
What happened next is unclear but hopefully, following the friend’s super calm attitude, the swimmer safely got back onto the boat. It’s also unknown what type of shark it actually was.
The video of the incident was shared on Reddit on September 27 and has so far been upvoted over 40,000 times.
A Reddit user commented on the fact it was unlikely to have been a basking shark. They said, ‘There are all kinds of sharks in the waters you know? Hammerheads, white tips, blues, makos, and the chances that these bozos got a basking shark –it’s a hundred to one.’
Another one wrote, ‘This is honestly the scariest video I think I’ve ever seen. My feet were hanging over the edge of the mattress until I watched this sh*t.’