Shark charges at man in surf, but it’s not what it appears

A video shot from a hotel room overlooking a Florida beach appears to show a shark charging at a man standing in the surf, but look closer.

A video shot from a hotel room overlooking the shoreline in Panama City Beach, Fla., appears to show a hammerhead shark charging a man standing in the surf as if about to attack, but a closer look reveals the real reason behind the shark’s actions.

At Splash Resort, on the morning of his wedding, Mike Pharr noticed a hammerhead shark swimming down the beach near some swimmers and decided to shoot video to show it later to his then fiancée.

“I didn’t expect what would happen next,” Pharr explained in the description of his ViralHog video. “The hammerhead made a sudden turn toward the man seen in the video. At first, it seemed as if the shark was going after the man, but upon reviewing [the video], I noticed that a small fish instinctively used the man as a shield to escape the shark.”

Look closely and you can see the fish swim from the safety of the man and into the whitewater, though to do so you might have to view it full screen.

Several people were yelling at the man to warn him, but it wasn’t until the shark made its U-turn that he finally made his way to shore, which might have been a good thing.

“It’s my opinion that had the man known the shark was close by and moved he would have quite possibly been mistaken for the fish and been bitten,” Pharr said. “It seems to me from watching my video multiple times that sharks really aren’t interested in us, we just get caught up and are mistakenly targeted by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Photo courtesy of ViralHog.