A Florida dad got the scare of a lifetime while flying his drone during a beach day with his family after he unwittingly snapped a few aerial shots of a shark lurking in the water near his children, Buzzfeed News reported.
Photographer Dan Watson was able to catch the predator approaching his children just in time while watching the footage live on his phone screen.
He had been sunning with his wife, Sally, and their three young kids: Landon, 5, Jonathan, 6, and Grace, 9.
He planned to post the beach photos to his Instagram page, @learningcameras. So, while his kids and wife returned to the knee-deep water to splash around, Dan stood on the beach and controlled the flying drone with his phone.
To Dan's horror, his phone screen was showing something lurking far too close to his family.
As he watched the shadowy figure cut through the water, he realized what he was seeing and, more importantly, that it was moving closer and closer to his swimming family.
"I'm screaming at my wife, who is a little bit closer to the kids, and we're running out to get them and yelling at them to get in," Dan explained.
"I was worried that they wouldn't get out in time," Dan said. "It looked very close on the drone camera, from what I was seeing, and it was moving fairly quickly."
In the first picture, the shark can be seen facing the children and the beach's shore, seemingly poised to continue approaching that direction.
"See that dark shadow making its way straight for the shore & those people?" Dan wrote in the caption. "That was my view this weekend while flying my Mavic 2 Pro... and oh, 3 of those people are my kids!"
In this photo, you can see the obvious movement and panic as the children inside the water hurry to get to safety while Dan continues shouting from the beach.
"It's kids — you never quite know if they're going to instantly respond," Dan said. "Thankfully they did get that terrified response and started running very, very quickly."
His daughter, however, is still pretty shaken and is now nervous about returning to the water. Dan's wife, Sally, is especially apprehensive about letting their children go swimming there again.
"I know there are sharks in the area," Dan said. "I do not think — or did not think — they are in shallowish waters ... where people would generally be."
"There would have been no way to have known or seen about this from any way, except that I happened to fly the drone at that moment in time," Dan said.
In his Instagram post, he added that he'll be taking his drone with him on every beach trip from now on.
An 18-year-old surfer was paddling in the water at New Smyrna when he was bitten in the foot.
He suffered minor puncture wounds and was treating at the scene. Judging from the size of the bite, experts estimate the shark was likely under 4-feet long.
h/t: Buzzfeed News
