Shark sneaks up on spear-fisherman

Had a similiar experience when spearfishing in the Red Sea when I worked in Saudi.
Had two 30 lb plus groupers on my creel line. As I was heading back to our dive boat I saw another group of three divers pointing at me as we closed on the boat. Thinking they were looking at my stringer I gave them a thumbs up in return. Thats when one of the group shook his head vigorously and pointed again, this time slightly behind me. I stopped and looked back as 9-10 ft Oceanic blacktip passed by at about 15 ft. He had been slowly trailing me for God knows how long. Thankfully he didn't press the issue and cruised off, but I can guarantee you a 3 minute 15 ft safety stop never took so long.

After watching it again some things stick out at me.
-Dude handles it like ice. Don't think my response was as chilled as his. Kudos for cojones of steel.
Thats a hoss of a tiger shark, good bit bigger than the blacktip that riled me up. My worry here is that the shark, especially at first, had his pectoral fins down, which usually means an aggressive posture. Good go bad real quick at any moment.
Smart move throwing the one fish on board, but there is no triggerfish on this Earth worth that encounter. Think I would have had to pull it off the stringer and let it go in order to buy time to get back up on kayak.

Concur.

Does make you vulnerable for a couple seconds, but I was thinking the same thing

it would have been something if the shark grabbed the stringer and took off with the kayak

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At first I was like man that looks like fun maybe Ill take some diving lessons. Then I was like frick that shite. Id rather fight a bear with just a pocket knife than a shark in his own habitat.

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Same.

I'd thought about taking some lessons and going spearfishing or something but sharing the waters with arguably the best predators in the world does not appeal to me.

Humans are completely out of our element in/under water and even with a spear gun you're completely at the shark's mercy.

A buddy of mine used to say "as soon as you put your big toe in that water, you're sharing it with a bunch of shite that can kill you."

Eff that.

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I can't understand why he didn't re-cock the damn speargun.

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My thoughts exactly. I know he did the right thing by not shooting him, but I would have cocked it incase of emergency.

Dude is very calm under pressure.

That's ridiculous, I would've shite my wetsuit. Can't believe how calm the guy was. My first reaction would've probably been to swamp the damn kayak getting back into it .

I had a similar experience last summer snorkeling around Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. I had gotten out pretty far from the fort and was just letting the current kind of take me around when I looked up and was VERY close to a 6+ foot great barracuda, biggest one I'd ever seen. I was wearing one of those old school style masks that are oval shaped and it had a chrome ring around the outside. I changed course and swam the heck out of there pretty quick.

I had my first close shark encounter this past week free diving.

6 footer came and snatched a snapper about 2 foot from me off my stringer while free diving