Bull Shark Attacks Fishing Boat in Wild Footage, Causing 'Astronomical' Damage

Despite their fearsome reputations as apex predators, it's actually extremely rare for sharks to attack humans. What's even more rare is for sharks to attack vessels in the water. But that's exactly what happened to a group of fisherman recently off the coast of Florida, and the wild scene was all caught on drone footage.

Joshua Jorgensen, who runs the popular BlacktipH YouTube account which features "some of the most exciting fishing videos" on the internet, said that he was flying his drone at the beach when he spotted two huge cobia swimming with a bull shark. As he explained in a video posted to Instagram, cobia are some of the best-tasting fish in the ocean, and as such, he called up his buddy Carl, who raced over to try catch them.

But apparently, the bull shark had other plans.

After Carl showed up on his boat with a fishing crew, Jorgensen continued filming with his drone when all of a sudden, the shark attacked the boat's engine. The shark proceeded to attack the boat five times, swim away, and then return for three more attacks.

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When the crew returned to shore, they found extensive damage to the boat.

"We’re thinking, you know, maybe he grabbed the propeller," Carl said later in the video. "We weren’t expecting the damage that we had when we got back to the dock, and it was just astronomical.

"The whole middle of the engine’s completely ripped out. The trim tab’s broken. And I didn’t think a shark could actually shake a boat like that," he continued. "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 would attack the boat in the violent manner it did, but a few commenters floated colorful theories that the shark was somehow "protecting" the cobia.

"Those cobia were his friends and he was defending them," wrote one commenter, while another added, "Protecting his boys leave the fish alone." "Those cobia were his friends I suppose haha," quipped yet another.

Or perhaps the shark was even saving the fish for its own dinner. In either case, point taken that you do not come between a bull shark and its cobia.