Tiger Shark Attacks Kayak, Angler Thinks He Knows Why

An angler who survived a harrowing tiger shark attack on his kayak last May has shared footage of the encounter along with a possible explanation for the attack.

Scott Haraguchi had reeled in a grouper while fishing with a buddy off Kualoa, Oahu. He didn't let the grouper bleed out and doesn't believe the smell was a factor in the shark hitting his kayak.

Minutes later, as seen in the footage, the tiger shark appears in front of Haraguchi's bow and slams into his kayak.

“There has been a lot of speculation as to why a tiger shark would run into a kayak at full speed,” Haraguchi explained via Instagram. “Hopefully this answers all of those questions.”

Haraguchi captured the scene with a mounted GoPro that documented his fishing trips. Days later, he told FTW Outdoors that the shark may have mistaken his kayak for a seal.

But in the footage, he offers a different theory.

“The shark approaches the front of his kayak as if to ram or scare him rather than eat him,” Haraguchi begins. “And as it slides up the side of the kayak, it realizes it doesn’t taste a seal or a whale or anything alive.”

However, slow-motion footage shows the large shark chewing on the kayak with much of its body sticking out of the water.

Haraguchi and his companion remained in the area “with our limbs out of the water” for several minutes and eventually discovered a wounded seal, which Haraguchi points out in the footage.

He concluded: “I think the shark rammed me because he thought I was a competitor for his seal-killing. What do you think?”

There's no way to know it, but tiger sharks, which can grow up to 20 feet long, often prey on seals, turtles, fish, molluscs and other creatures.

They are also involved in the vast majority of shark attacks on humans in Hawaiian waters.