Shocking footage captured by a traveling family showed the moment when a dad, checking the water out for his kids, noticed something deadly hiding in the water.
BJ, Janelle, and their two children have been traveling around Australia full-time since May 2021. So, the family is very familiar with the occasionally compromising landscape of the ‘Down Under.’
In a video posted on their Instagram account called ‘Getting Lost Is Being Found’, BJ decided to test the waters of the crystal clear water at Shark Bay in Western Australia. BJ shook his foot, creating a small splash in the water.
Immediately following the splash, a shadow appeared just in front of him and swam closer- directly toward BJ. As you can see, a large tiger shark is sinisterly swimming in the shallows.
“We were headed in for a swim and spotted a fin so my husband splashed a little to see if it was aggressive and it came straight at him,” Janelle said. “We decided not to swim with the kids there.”
While it’s common to see sharks in the waters of Shark Bay, they are not usually so close to the shoreline, the family said.
Their followers were stunned by how difficult it was to see the shark despite it being a clear sunny day with incredibly clear water.
“Despite the clear water, it was hard to see until it hit the very shallow water,” one woman remarked.
“Lol. I was prepared to laugh at people being overly paranoid but then it popped up. Ok fair,” another person said.
Though sharks are common- especially in Australia, the risk of being bitten by a shark in a year is less than one in a million, far less than the risk of drowning when you swim with no sharks involved.
Though statistics may seem in your favor, there were six shark attacks recorded in Western Australia in 2021, including one fatality. In 2020, there were seven attacks, with three people losing their lives to the attacks.
A dad who was checking the water before letting his kids go in at a beach in Francois Peron National Park, Western Australia, found himself close to a shark swimming in the shallows. pic.twitter.com/gXjL2PW9H0
— Storyful (@Storyful) November 3, 2022
