A kayaker was thrown from his boat Tuesday after coming face-to-face with a great white shark off the coast of Santa Cruz, California in the Pacific Ocean.
Steve Lawson was about a quarter mile off shore when he felt a jolt and looked down to see a great white taking a bite out of his kayak, Santa Cruz police said in a Facebook post.
The force of the shark's attack threw Larson into the water.
“I spent a little time in the water swimming around. I panicked, everyone panics. There's a shark in the water. But he didn't come back. He wasn't interested in me,” Lawson told KSBW.
While Lawson was unharmed, his boat wasn’t that fortunate. There was a visible 12-inch bite mark, which was obvious in a photo of the boat Larson posted on Facebook.
Some might not have gone back into the water after an incident like this, but not Lawson.
“Put a hole in the boat and a scare in me. Otherwise I'm OK,” Lawson said in the post. “I'll be paddling the other boat tomorrow.”
After Lawson's shark encounter, Santa Cruz officials issued a four-day swimming ban out of an abundance of caution.
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