Andy Nelson and Tim Ryan were hunting for crays off Safety Bay in Western Australia when they came dangerously close to a great white shark.
The four-metre ocean predator was lurking just metres away, circling for five minutes while the mates swam low, trying to stay calm.
“He’s giving me the shark signal quite enthusiastically, I’ve turned around and still have that image of a head of a very large shark above me,” Nelson told 9News.
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Ryan recalls being close enough to touch the shark.
“It came straight over my head, like that, with its mouth a little bit open, I could have reached up and touched it,” he said.
“I was definitely like yeah, we were a bit concerned.”
If that wasn’t stressful enough, while the pair were 10 metres below the surface, Ryan’s oxygen tank began to run empty.
“I was running lower and lower on air by the minute,” he said.
“The one thing you don’t want to do is swim away from a white pointer, cause your feet doing that [paddling] is like bait.”
The fly in-fly out worker was forced to make an ascent without air in the end.
A shark scientist has commended the pair on how they responded, crediting their experience and saying their calmness was key to their survival.
“There’s safety in numbers, always keep an eye out and face the animal and try to stay calm and avoid any erratic movements,” shark scientist Dr Leonardo Guida told 9News.
The two mates are now bonded for life by their heart-stopping encounter.
“Mates don’t get any closer than that,” Ryan laughed.
“We feel really lucky to have the chance to interact with a huge apex predator,” Nelson added.
“So, we were very lucky.”
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