Bull sharks have long been considered one of the most dangerous sharks in the world because of how aggressive they can be. On July 24, a fishing boat off the Florida coast found out the hard way just how the shark earned that title.
A video shared on Instagram shows shocking drone footage of a bull shark attacking a fishing boat. Josh Jorgensen, the host of BlacktipH Fishing, was flying a drone from the beach when he saw two massive cobia swimming alongside a bull shark. Cobia, a fish known for its delicious, mild flavor, often swim in the wake of bull sharks to pick up baitfish and other prey that the sharks kick up off the ocean floor.
Jorgensen continued to track the fish with his drone and called his friend Carl Torresson, a fishing boat captain who runs a charter service out of Riviera Beach. With Jorgensen's tip, Torresson raced over to the cobia with his clients and began sight-casting to them.
Jorgensen followed Torresson's boat with his drone to get aerial shots of the clients fishing for the cobia, when all of a sudden, the bull shark attacked Torresson's outboard motors.
In the video, the shark can be swimming aggressively at the boat, jaws open as he attacks the outboards. The shark thrashes in the water at the back of the boat, biting and butting at the outboards. He swims away, only to come back for more.
"The shark attacked the boat five times, swam away, and then came back for more," Jorgensen says in the video. In total, the shark attacked Torresson's boat eight times.
Eventually, Torresson brought his boat back to the dock. He had thought that the shark had only grabbed the propeller, but once docked, he could see the full damage the bull shark had inflicted: The shark had ripped out the entire middle of one outboard engine and had broken the trim tabs.
"I didn't think a shark could actually shake a boat like that," Torresson says in the video. "The boat was shaking like a bag of popcorn. Like literally, I was shaking like an earthquake. I was like, 'What's going on?' I went back there and I noticed it was a shark doing it. I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?' This is like a ride from Universal Studios."
It's unclear why the shark attacked the boat. While known for their aggression, it's extremely rare for bull sharks to attack humans and even more rare for them to attack boats. Commenters on the video were quick to add their own hypotheses though. "Those cobia were his friends," wrote one commenter, while another suggest that "bull sharks really have some anger management issues."
Or maybe the shark had his own dinner plans for the two cobia.
READ MORE: Watch: Shark Pulls Fisherman Overboard in the Everglades
