A marine biologist showed no fear when he jumped in to swim with a hungry shark who had just tried to bite his boat.
In February 2019, shark scientist Riley Elliott was conducting research in New Zealand for his PhD when he caught the Mako shark on camera.
Elliott, who was with his fiancée and an underwater cinematographer at the time, wasn’t scared that the shark was looking for food and got into the water without hesitation to conduct his research.
He said he had learned a few tricks throughout the last decade to ensure a safe swim and was confident that the shark wouldn’t attack him.
“Sharks are not aggressive, man-eating machines and are in fact extremely cautious, calculated animals, that would otherwise not have existed longer than any other animal on earth - over 400 million years.”
The thirty-five-year-old said the bite hadn’t caused any damage to the boat as the shark was trying to figure out if it was edible and backed away when he realised it wasn’t.
"It was an investigatory bite, so quite soft, and it just tasted it, and obviously wasn't to its liking," he said.
"It was likely also a question of is this food as they have likely never seen a boat, let alone a human, before."
Caters News.
