'I was his prey': Diver recalls chilling ordeal after being attacked by WORLD'S FASTEST SHARK
PENSACOLA, FLORIDA: The terrifying clip shows a fisherman anxiously screaming for help as the world's fastest shark attacks him during a dive. Chad Patti, 30, and a friend were spearfishing 70 miles off the coast of Florida when he was attacked by a 10ft mako shark. On New Year's Day, a frightening video captured Patti being attacked by the beast.
Patti was filming himself while spearfishing off Pensacola with his friend Josh Loucks while wearing a GoPro on his head. He also filmed the moment a huge mako shark suddenly materialized below the surface and charged at him when he surfaced after a dive, as reported by The Sun.
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On the final dive of the day at precisely 2.50 pm, the mako shark attacked Patti, who was wahoo fishing. “We knew that we needed to leave at 2:30 p.m., latest 3 p.m., that way we could get back before dark,” Patti said. “The [fish] were about 150 feet from me and I was waiting. I did a dive about 70 feet because I saw a Wahoo, and when I came back up, I started looking around trying to see if I could get that one last fish. I start to swim forward and get ready to ask another question and then as soon as I open my mouth the shark blindsides me," as reported by WRBL.
Patti claimed that while sharks have occasionally tried to steal his fish in the past, they have never really attacked him. “I was the prey, there was no mistaken identity,” Patti said. “It’s not like he bumped me checking me out, he crushed my fin. You can see he has the fin in his mouth, and you can see his jaw and gills tense up. Later in the video you can see he still has a piece of the fin in his mouth trying to figure out if it is food or not.”
Patti claimed he was certain he had lost his leg when the beast chomped down on his fin before disappearing. The distraught fisherman was heard yelling for assistance as his friend dove into the sea to assist him. "It basically shoved my knee to my chest, almost knocked the wind out of me, knocked my gun out of my hand, partially flooded my mask and I did a summersault in the water. The first scream, the 'help,' I didn’t think I had a leg, honestly." Patti added, "It wasn’t just a bump. I got it [the video] slowed down five times the speed and you can see the shark clearly has the fin in its mouth. You can see him crush it. It was a predatory strike from the mako. I was his prey. There was no mistaken identity. There was no fish in the water. No blood in the water," Patti told Pensacola News Journal.
Patti miraculously avoided harm throughout the attack. He claimed that as the shark threw itself at him, it grasped his fin, a common hunting technique used by the species to immobilize its target. "It did what any mako does. It kind of takes out the motor, cuts the tail off the fish in the first strike and then it doubles back and finishes it off," Patti said. He added, "When it hit my fin, what it was doing was it was trying to take the motor out. Luckily the boat was there and my buddy Josh jumped in the water." Patti said he "never saw a sign of a shark except the fish being a little spooked." He claimed that the horrific experience would not deter him from returning to the water. "I’m not going to let it stop me from doing something I love."
Patti has been deep sea fishing for the past three years and said he has seen two other sharks while diving, but none had attacked before. “The first one I saw was a good 14-to-15 feet long,” Patti said. “The second one I saw was in Mississippi.”