An Australian man fishing off the coast of Queensland captured video of a ray leaping out of the water and appearing to briefly take flight to escape a hammerhead shark.
Brody Sutton, whose video of the incident went viral on Instagram, said he was off the coast of Cape York when he started filming the shark’s high-speed pursuit of the ray.
He recorded the moment the ray jumped out of the water, flapping its fins like wings, to give the shark the slip.
“I’ve seen it many times, just not that close to the boat,” Sutton told Yahoo News Australia.
Lawrence Chlebeck, a marine biologist from Humane World for Animals, said the would-be prey was likely a cownose or mobula ray.
“What it’s doing is breaking the line of vision that the hammerhead has on it, so just by quickly exiting the water, it can break that focus that the shark has, and you can tell the predator loses it shortly after because of it,” Lawrence said.
Sutton confirmed the ray successfully avoided becoming a meal.
“The ray escaped under my boat,” he said.
