Fisherman swims for his life after boat is overturned by shark

A YouTube video has emerged of the terrifying moment a shark attacked a kayak forcing its occupant to make a dash to another boat.

Ben Chancey said he was trying to hook a grouper fish when it broke free, leaving the hook to catch one of the circling bull sharks. He said he refused to let go because he didn’t want the shark to “get the best of him”.

“I wanted to win”, he told the New York Daily News.

He said there were 10 of the sharks swimming around but once his friends saw he was OK “they were like, ‘Hey, jump back in. Let’s catch it’.” Chancey, who runs an “extreme” fishing expeditions company called Chew On This, said he wasn’t initially concerned as sharks weren't really know to attack boats.

Eventually he and his crew were able to pull the shark onto the larger boat and remove the hook from its month. It swam away unharmed.

Bull sharks are one of the species of shark most likely to bite humans and experts have suggested they may have been responsible for a spate of attacks along the New Jersey coast in 1916 which inspired the movie Jaws rather than the Great Whites that have been traditionally blamed.