14 DAY TRIAL // A 25-year-old surfer has escaped an encounter with a shark in Hawaii, by punching the beast and getting it to back off.
Jeff Horton, a former boxer, was attacked on Sunday morning near Kilauea. According to The Garden Island, he tried getting to shore from the moment he spotted a fin in the water.
“I didn’t think much of it,” he remembers.
He thought it was gone 20 minutes later, when he placed his leg in the water. He saw something approach him at large speeds, and pulled it back on the board.
"It came flying straight toward me. [...] I started punching as hard as I could," he recalls. The shark bit the surfboard and sent Horton flying into the water. He climbed on top of it and started punching it, hitting him about eight times.
“I finally got one nice punch into the eye. I put some really good hits on it, for sure. […] I was pretty scared,” he admits.
He got it to pull back and let go of the board, and he then managed to climb on top of it again and paddle away. He was 200 yards (183 meters) from shore at the time.
He was joined by a second surfer and he got to shore safely. He has survived the incident unscathed, except for some scratches from the fish's skin.
“Tiger sharks are considered particularly dangerous because of their size, and their indiscriminate feeding behavior.
“They will eat almost anything, and often feed on objects at the water’s surface. Although it’s never been proven, some bites on people may be the result of investigatory behavior; the shark bites an object (in this case a person) to determine whether it is an acceptable food source,” a description on hawaiisharks.com reads.