Father horrified as he spots shark approaching three children, wife while taking photos with drone in Florida
It was a scary but lucky day for Dan Watson who was using his drone to click beach photos of his family.
He suddenly saw an ominous and eery shadow circling the waters very close to where his children were playing and splashing around in the water at Florida's New Smyrna Beach. He was there with his wife and kids on a June weekend when he saw the shark on the display of his drone.
Watson spoke to Fox35 Orlando and recalled the terrifying incident. "Kids were playing in the beach and I just decided, 'Hey, now’s a good time to get a picture of them overhead. As soon as I got it in the air, I started seeing a shadow moving through the water right towards them."
He asked his family to get out of the water. The professional photographer took to his Instagram page to share two amazing images of the incident. The first picture showed the shark approaching the family near the shore.
The second picture, he said, was the outcome of his yelling to get the family out of the water. It shows his wife and children running out of the sea as the shark turns and swims back.
Watson captioned the image, "See that dark shadow making its way straight for the shore & those people? That was my view this weekend while flying my Mavic 2 Pro… and oh, 3 of those people are my kids!" He then said: "the next image resulted from my yelling to get out of the water and the unmistakable outline of a shark. Definitely too close of an encounter for my liking!" He also has a YouTube channel where he posted, "Thinking my [drone] is now coming with me to every beach day!!!"
As soon as his family was out of the water, Watson showed his wife, Sally, the picture of their close encounter. Sally told News 13, "When you think of a shark, you think of them in deep water, you don’t think of them extremely close, and you don’t think they’ll come in knee-deep water… it is terrifying to see them come that close to my kids."
The New Smyrna Beach is located in Volusia County and has recorded the most number of shark attacks—303.
According to CBS Miami, it was just last week that an 18-year-old surfer was bitten on the foot by a shark. Earlier, in April, another teenager was bitten by a shark in the same area.