You may have seen the video of the Tiger Shark attack already. Some misinformation has gone out that should be corrected.

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Here’s what happened on May 12, 2023.

My partner Frank and I were able to catch 1 piece of live opelu (scad mackeral) each. The conditions were super, duper slow because it was sunny, calm with a flat tide. Everything was lazy. We took that bait out to 250ft with no bites so we drifted in. I didn’t know at the time but Frank saw what he believes was a tiger shark 10ft below the surface making its way into the shallows.

When we were on the shallow dropoff, in 55ft of water, I texted my buddies to update them on the slow condtions. While I was struggling to text through my waterproof bag, I had spun around and wrapped my line in the rudder where the Bixpy motor is mounted. I paddled towards Frank so he could free it for me and realized a fish was on the line. I was able to lift the rudder/motor out of the water, clear the wrap and land the 3lb roi (peacock grouper). Since a friend eats them carefully (they are known to be high in ciquatoxin), I sat on the right side of my kayak, side saddle, and put the roi in my fish bag behind the seat.

Then I spun back around, straddled the sides of the kayak with both feet in the water, and checked my leader line for scrapes. I heard what sounded like a boat sliding to a stop, with its motor off, and looked up and thought a large turtle was coming at me. The kayak got hit fairly hard by the shark, and I know I saw the tiger’s head, but in that second or two, I didn’t realize I had taken my left foot out of the water, and pushed the shark’s head off the kayak.

I was shooken up but didn’t realize how close the shark came to biting my foot or me. Frank didn’t hear the impact and didn’t know why I was screaming (and cussing) so he was pretty chill. Because of that I calmed down and carefully looked around. We actually fished for another half hour (in hindsight, not the smartest thing to do) and then I heard a gurgling sound that I thought was being made by a floating turtle. Instead I saw this 5ft or 6ft long brownish thing with white spots, struggling to submerge and swim. I believe this was a mortally wounded seal and decided we should really get out of the area.

I believe the tiger shark mortally wounded the seal and was waiting for it to die, when it came back and thought I was the dead seal since I had turned the Bixpy motor off and wasn’t paddling. Or maybe it thought I was a threat to its seal kill. I dunno.

When I got home I told my wife a shark rammed me, and showed her the light scratches but they were so insignificant she wasn’t too concerned. In fact, since she knew I was safe, she was more concerned for the seal!!

When we saw the video we were horified! I initially just wanted to share the video with the shark and marine scientists, but would have felt bad if that shark ended up killing someone, so I posted still photos from the video in the Oahu Kayak Club Facebook Group and notified Dr Kim Holland, our resident shark expert in Hawaii.

A friend got in touch with KITV and set up a virtual interview I reluctantly participated in. That set off the media storm and far too many people illegally repurposed what KITV had posted on their website, and a lot of misinformation was spread. To clarify further I did interviews with ABC, NBC and Hawaii News Now (HNN). By far, Stephanie Lum’s HNN interview was the most accurate.

Update (4/13/24): Check out this post with video showing what had happened right before and right after the shark “attack”.