Kayaker captures dramatic video of shark attack after mistaking deadly predator for turtle

‘It was incredibly bad luck, but incredibly good luck to capture it’

A man who was kayaking off the coast of Hawaii was attacked by a shark in an encounter that was captured on video.

The incident took place on Friday when Scott Haraguchi was fishing less than two miles off the island of Oahu. He told a local television station that after catching a fish, he had left his GoPro camera running.

“It was incredibly bad luck, but incredibly good luck to capture it,” he told KITV.

The video posted on YouTube by Mr Haraguchi showed the shark coming straight at him and opening its mouth right before ramming into the kayak.

Mr Haraguchi was heard screaming as the shark’s head slid along the side of the kayak during the collision.

He then managed to kick the shark with his left foot, following which it went back into the water.

“Tiger shark!” Haraguchi yelled out in the video after the attack. “Tiger shark rammed me. Holy f***.”

On his YouTube video he wrote: “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. 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,” he said.

In April, a surfer in Hawaii was bitten by a shark in the leg in the the fourth shark incident this year and the third in which someone suffered a bite according to an incident list kept by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR).