As Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week celebrates one of the ocean's most fearsome and interesting creatures, we complied a list of five of the strangest shark encounters from the past year.
Jack O'Neil, 27, brought his severely damaged surfboard into Ocean Surf Shop in Folly Beach, S.C. claiming that it was bitten in half by a large shark.
"He estimated the shark at 8 feet, and it knocked him off the board as he was paddling for a wave," they wrote on Facebook. "The board snapped as it bounced to the beach after he pulled his leash off and escaped the shark. You never know what's lurking..."
O'Neil said he merely caught a glimpse of the shark, which South Carolina Aquarium senior biologist Arnold Postell believed could be a sandbar shark or a black tipped shark, before being thrown from his board.
"It felt like somebody had put on the emergency brake. It felt like you had hit a rock," O'Neil said. "The board just wobbled. It peeled off a shank of my board, peeled off the complete bottom down to the stringer."Florida teens film encounter with great white shark
A pair of Florida teens managed to catch their encounter with a great white shark on video while fishing for grouper off the coast of Florida.
"He probably did 20 or so circles around the boat," Magone said. "I was just holding the camera and just sticking it in the water so I could get some great shots of him."
The teens were not startled by the encounter and said the shark did not appear to be tagged in any way.
"He seemed nice, friendly, calm," Phelan said. "Just a gray shadow coming up on us. You couldn't miss him. A 16-foot shark coming up on you."
Great white shark videobombed by leaping second shark
Remo Sabatini got more than he bargained for when recording his encounter with a great white shark after a second shark leapt out of the water and into the video.
The second shark can be seen leaping high out of the water just as the great white nears the completion of its meal.
Playful lemon shark gets some love from scuba diver
Scuba diver Mickey Smith captured footage of a friendly 8-foot lemon shark named Blondie getting some "love" from a fellow scuba diver.
Video shared to YouTube by user Shark Addicts shows the shark allowing the scuba diver to the shark's face for about a minute.
Smith said Blondie is well known to the crew of Emerald Charters in Jupiter, Fla. and often has similar interactions with fellow divers Cameron Nimmo and Capt. Randy Jordan.
"This does not injure the shark in any way, she's an 8 foot, 200 lb. lemon shark we can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do," he wrote.
Florida woman taken to hospital with shark attached to arm
An unidentified 23-year-old Florida woman's shark encounter lasted longer than usual as she arrived at a local hospital with the shark still attached to her arm.
The 2-foot nurse shark was killed by a bystander before the fire department's arrival "but was still attached to her arm" when she arrived at Boca Regional Hospital in stable condition, fire rescue spokesman Robert Lemons said to UPI.
Witnesses say the woman and her brother were antagonizing the shark and "holding the shark by its tail, as Nate Pachter, 11, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
