iStockphoto / Ryan Cake
The Crossing for Cystic Fibrosis is an annual charity even where paddleboarders ‘make the cross’ from Bimini in The Bahamas to Florida and raise awareness and money for charity along the way.
This year marked the 10th annual Crossing for Cystic Fibrosis and one team encountered a first for the event. A spotter on the boat saw a massive dorsal fin pop out of the water right behind one of the paddlers and called for them to come to the safety of the boat.
The other paddler in the water hadn’t spotted the enormous great hammerhead shark at that point either. Nobody was injured but the curious great hammerhead shark certainly had everyone spooked.
The hammerhead shark video posted to Instagram and TikTok has caused a stir. It’s also worth nothing how calm the seas were when there wasn’t land anywhere in sight.
In the caption on Instagram, they wrote:
Malea’s husband Ricky, who was on the boat at the time, and her relay partner paddling with her in the event, was the first to spot the tall dorsal fin as it rose up behind Malea on her board. Their team was almost halfway across the Gulf Stream, out of sight of land, when the shark appeared. Ricky was able to calmly give his wife direction on maneuvering the situation to get safely to the boat without incident. Both Ricky and Malea are experienced paddlers and official mentors with The Crossing For CF community.
Statistics show according to the International Shark Attack File, which is the world’s only scientifically documented database of all known shark attacks, since 1900 there have been 16 recorded incidents between humans and hammerhead sharks, and of those, there have been zero deaths.
Malea, who was in the water, added “None of us felt unsafe. We felt calm. I didn’t have time to allow myself to be scared. Even an encounter as unique as mine, would not deter me from competing in The Crossing again.”
Commenters had a lot to say. You are welcome to read through the comment sections yourself. But I want to call out this one specifically:
“The more you paddle in the ocean, the more these encounters will happen. It can be scary, but most of the time they look and cruise on. This situation was handled so well by the Captain and paddler.”
That is spot-on. The more time you spend in the water the more likely you are to experience surreal encounters such as this. Everyone who has grown up in and around the coast has a shark story of their own and 999 out of 1000 times it was just a close encounter and nothing more.