A Florida scuba diver got some unwelcome attention from a great white shark in an encounter captured by a video camera on his helmet.
While diving to 90 feet in the Atlantic Ocean near Vero Beach, Jimmy Roseman first spotted the large shark at some distance but said the shark also noticed him.
It swam away at first but during the next couple of minutes it kept approaching close and closer, at one point coming so close one of its fins bumped into Roseman's scuba tank.
Roseman posted a YouTube video of the encounter, captured by a GoPro video camera attached to this helmet.
"In the video, it did look like it was kind of far away," he said. "But the whole time it was about 6 to 7 foot away from me."
Although he was equipped with a spear gun, Roseman said he refrained from shooting the shark, just using the spear as a prod to poke at the 12-foot creature, which eventually swam away.
"I had to poke it really hard that last time," he said.
Great white sharks, typically seen in warm-temperate and cold coastal waters of every major ocean on Earth, can grow to lengths of 21 feet.
They're a not-uncommon sight off the Atlantic coast of Florida, often following one type of prey, right whales, as the whales migrate to warmer southern waters from the North Atlantic.
The numbers seen off the Florida coast can vary seasonally depending on food sources and changes in water temperature, experts say, and they are most likely to be encountered in shallower waters over the continental shelf.
Although the meeting of Roseman and the great white turned out fairly benign, about 75 attacks by sharks are reported annually.
The great white is one of three species most often associated with attacks on humans, along with bull and tiger sharks.
Another great white shark dubbed "Katharine" has made news in Florida recently, as scientists tracked her using a GPS unit attached to her dorsal fin all the way from Massachusetts, where she was tagged, down the U.S. Atlantic Coast and on toward the Bahamas.
She is being followed by OCEARCH, a nonprofit marine researcher organization studying shark behavior.
