A Florida charter boat captain could not believe his eyes when something massive appeared in the water.
What he saw next had everyone on board frozen in terror.
And these Florida fishermen’s jaws dropped when a monster from the deep showed its teeth.
Giant great white shark circles Florida charter boat in terrifying close encounter
Destin charter boat captain Taylor Bankston and his Kentucky guests were enjoying a routine fishing trip about nine miles offshore when something extraordinary happened.
At first, Captain Bankston thought he was hallucinating.
“We were on a regular fishing trip, and I looked up… what I thought I saw in the water was a submarine, and I was waiting next for the periscope to pop out of the water,” Bankston told The Destin Log.
But what emerged was not military hardware, it was something far more ancient and terrifying.
“But it never did… and then the submarine turned into something that had giant teeth and a giant eyeball,” the captain recounted.
What Captain Bankston spotted was a massive great white shark, estimated at 14 feet long and weighing between 1,100 and 1,400 pounds.
The massive predator circled their 26-foot center console charter boat, Get the Gaff, for a nerve-wracking 20 minutes.
Shark puts jaws on display in a scene right out of a movie
The encounter became even more terrifying when the enormous shark decided to investigate the vessel in the most direct way possible.
“She popped up and circled us for 20 minutes,” Bankston explained. “At one point, the shark came up and mouthed the back of the boat, bit it, to see what we were… and realized that we weren’t anything eatable, and then kept going.”
The captain climbed up into his boat’s tower to get a better view of the prehistoric predator, capturing photos and videos of the heart-stopping encounter.
“I was leaning over the top of the great white… my heart was pumping,” Bankston admitted.
Just when they thought the encounter was over, the shark gave them one final movie-worthy moment.
“Then five minutes later we saw a dorsal fin about 100 yards away from us going across the surface slow as all get out… like the movie Jaws. That was her when she swam away,” the captain said.
The dorsal fin towered about 2½ feet above the water’s surface.
“Literally the dorsal fin looked like the fin on Jaws,” Bankston recalled, noting that “Jaws 2” was actually filmed in the Destin area.
“You don’t think that theme song – dun, dun, dun – was going through my head when I saw that thing,” he said.
JAWS flashbacks had everyone thinking of one famous line
The massive size of the shark immediately brought a classic movie line to mind.
“First thing I thought was ‘captain we’re going to need a bigger boat,'” Bankston said, referencing the iconic line from the 1975 Spielberg thriller.
The family from Kentucky, parents and their two daughters, were both terrified and thrilled by their unexpected encounter.
“Oh my gosh, it made their vacation,” Bankston said.
The group was using an i-Pilot trolling motor to hold position over a reef while fishing for vermillion snapper and triggerfish when the apex predator appeared.
“We were all baffled. It was as if we were viewing a dinosaur,” the captain recounted.
Heart-pounding fear and adrenaline, but the fishing continued
Despite the enormous size of their unexpected visitor, Captain Bankston said they were never truly frightened, though they certainly felt the adrenaline.
“If I would have been hooked up to a heart monitor, there would have been some peaking and beeping,” he admitted.
“We weren’t down in the hull crunched up, but we were highly alert and lots of adrenalin flowing,” Bankston said.
The captain credited his vessel with keeping them safe during the harrowing encounter.
“I knew I was in a good boat. And I knew we couldn’t short clean the boat today,” he said. “You respect the piece of equipment that kept you separate and safe.”
After the great white disappeared, the group resumed fishing and ended up having an excellent day on the water, catching plenty of “mingo”, the local name for vermillion snapper.
“The mingo had no idea there was a 1,400-pound shark swimming above their heads… and they were still chewing like crazy,” Bankston said.
This is not the first time great whites have been spotted in Florida waters. Just months ago, a “shark cam” captured close encounters between great whites and nurse sharks in the region, showing these massive predators are becoming a more common sight for Florida fishermen.
“It’s the biggest fish I’ve ever seen,” the captain said, summarizing an encounter he and his customers will never forget.
What turned this already good fishing day into “a great day” was this truly rare encounter with nature’s most feared predator, a great white shark day.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
