A paddleboarder raising money for charity as part of a long-distance relay had quite the close call last weekend when a shark appeared to be stalking her in the water. WPBF reports that Malea Tribble of Fort Lauderdale was about halfway through the 80-mile-plus journey from Bimini in the Bahamas to Lake Worth, Florida, a trip meant to raise money for cystic fibrosis, when she says she felt multiple taps on her board. "I dismissed it, thinking I picked up some seaweed on my fin," she says, per FOX 35.
What she didn't see—but what her husband, Ricky, saw from his perch on the accompanying safety boat about 30 feet away—was a shark fin popping up out of the water and seemingly following her. In video of the incident, Malea can be seen paddling as her husband urges her to get as quickly as she can back to the boat, without telling her what was going on (he says he didn't want her to panic). As he instructs her "Keep coming! Keep coming!," Malea calmly says, "A shark?" When he answers in the affirmative, she replies, "Fantastic."
Once Malea is safely on the boat, she and her husband shout to her relay partner, still out on the water not far from the boat as the shark circles, with Malea making a shark fin gesture on the top of her head (watch that interaction here), per the New York Post. "I never knew I had it in me to be that calm," she tells FOX 35 of her encounter with what they believe was a hammerhead shark. She adds to WPBF: "My husband jokes that it was the first time that I've ever listened to him in my life." Citing stats from the International Shark Attack File, the charity's Instagram notes there have been fewer than two dozen attacks by hammerhead sharks recorded around the world since 1900, none of them fatal. (More sharks stories.)
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