LAKE WORTH, Fla. (WSVN) — A South Florida woman was stalked at sea, as she came dangerously close to a hammerhead shark. Now, she’s talking about the close encounter.
Malea Tribble said she was halfway through an 80-mile trip from the Bahamas to Lake Worth Beach on Sunday when she came too close for comfort to the marine predator.
“It definitely kind of gives you a little bit of like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I can’t believe that happened.'” she said.
“I was just kind of doing my thing, and I felt a little bit of a tap on my board, but I thought I was picking up seaweed,” Tribble said. “That happens. You can drag seaweed on your fin.”
The encounter, which happened as she was taking part of an event that raises money for cystic fibrosis research, was captured on video.
Tribble said she suddenly noticed her paddleboard was not the only fin in the water. The other fin belonged to the hammerhead shark that was following her.
“I saw my husband’s face drop, and I saw him tell the captain to shut off the engine and then guided me to the boat, and so as soon as he did that, I knew it was a shark,” she said. “It’s one of those things that you have to trust the people you’re around, and I just knew to listen. My husband jokes that it was the first time that I’ve ever listened to him in my life.”
Tribble said she stayed calm the whole time and just focused on maintaining her balance, getting back to the boat and away from the shark.
“His head was underneath her board,” her husband was captured saying in the video. “I saw it once I sat down because it did go back underneath the board. Oddly enough, it actually looked at me. I swear I saw his eye, stare right at me.”
After a 10-minute break, Tribble got right back on her board and finished the trip.
“Just like falling in. You fall in, you get back up,” she said. “You don’t sit there and sulk about falling in. You have to just keep moving. It’s the best way to kind of move forward.”
Tribble isn’t letting the shark scare her or slow her down. She said she absolutely intends to do the event again next year.
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