A diver captured the terrifying moment he came face to face with a huge great white shark circling around him while his partner was inside a cave searching for crayfish.
Tim Ryan posted an eight-minute video of the exciting encounter on YouTube after going crabbing with his friend Andy Nelson in Safety Bay, off Coventry Reef, about 55 kilometers south of Perth.
Just before the Great White appeared, Nelson swam to a cave in search of crayfish and stayed there for five minutes, unaware that a 13-foot shark was swimming around his oxygen-poor friend.
Mr Ryan waited for his partner outside the cave when the “big bloody shark” appeared.
“Don, don, don, don literally and hilariously popped into my head when I saw the shark come out,” Mr Ryan said.
”’Oh my God, it’s Jaws,” I thought and then a second later I was really scared, then a second later I thought I have to deal with this and this is how I do it.
“I did my best to hold him down.”
Mr. Ryan said there were five things to do during a shark encounter and he did all five.
Tim Ryan posted an eight-minute video on YouTube after going crabbing with his friend Andy Nelson in Safety Bay, off Coventry Reef, about 55 kilometers south of Perth, when they encountered a huge great white shark.
“So obviously you don’t have to splash around and flap your wings and become attractive to the animal,” he said.
“You have to keep eye contact with it at all times or it will come and sneak up on you, you have to stay vertical in the water, then you have to keep your breathing and heart rate down.”
“I think I did all those things.”
Ryan said the great white shark was just a couple of meters away and swam so close to him that it could have touched him.
“There were several times when he swam over me, and also when he swam next to me I could have reached out and touched him,” he said.
Diver Andy Nelson was searching for crayfish inside a cave without realizing that a 4 meter shark had been circling his partner Tim Ryan for five minutes. Image: supplied.
‘He circled me for five whole minutes and oh my god he came in and made advances at me for the whole five minutes.
“It was only at the end that Andy came out of the cave and a second person in the water scared him.”
Ryan said swimming back to the boat was “pretty horrible” because they could no longer see the shark and its oxygen was extremely low.
Nelson swam back to find the boat and found the quickest way back, but Ryan had to turn around again and again to see if he could see the shark after they lost sight of it in the water.
“Well, that’s the point where the adrenaline levels went up a little bit because that’s their whole job, they go into the dark, sneak up and hit you from behind,” Mr Ryan said.
‘It’s the one you don’t see that you really have to worry about, especially when you definitely know there’s one nearby.
“You just turn around and it comes at you at 20 knots, you know?”
Mr Ryan said that when they finally returned to the boat, the couple simply laughed.
“It was all very exciting, you know, it took us probably half an hour to get our heart rate and breathing rate back,” he said.
“Andy at the time had no idea that I had a full five minutes with the shark surrounding me, he was quite shocked by the whole thing, we just shook our heads for a while.”
The 4-metre great white shark swam close to the divers and Tim Ryan told 9 News it was right on top of it with its mouth slightly open and close enough to touch it. Image: supplied.
