WATCH the chilling moment a group of beachgoers were blissfully unaware they were paddling a next to a three metre long shark.
The four swimmers were filmed heading into the sea in Cornwall by a nearby hiker who caught the the chilling moment on camera.
Hiker Katie Chown spotted an “ominous shadow” in the water on Sunday and started recording, initially thinking the ocean predator was a dolphin.
In the footage, Katie can be heard saying to her friend Clare: “There’s swimmers about to go in the sea.
“Oh wow, what the hell is it? Has it got a dorsal fin? Is it a dolphin?”
The pair were observing the scene unfolding in below them from a nearby cliff.
Down at Porthcurno Beach the swimmers appeared unaware of the lengthy creature as seagull swirled around it.
At the start of the video it swims adjacent to the shore but then starts to turn away from the beach, leaving the group to their paddling.
Katie clarified she and Clare observed the shark for several minutes until the people on the beach appeared to have noticed it.
They then continued on their 20km hike, unbothered, forgetting about the footage entirely as they embarked on their Cornish trek.
Katie was training for walking a 100km hike through the Himalayas in November to raise money for breast cancer charity Coppafeel.
When they eventually got round to checking the video again, they came to the conclusion that it could be a shark.
She said: “Analysing the footage later, the movement of the tail definitely discounted the seal idea and the nose looked wrong for a dolphin – was it a possible basking shark?
“But the mouth wasn’t big enough.”
After some deliberation, Clare decided to ask an expert who proposed the idea of a Porbeagle shark, given it had a dorsal fin.
Porbeagle sharks are one of the largest shark species that found in Cornwall and around the rest of the UK.
The species are critically endangered and commonly found in deeper, colder, water.
Despite being a hunter, this breed of shark tends to stick to eating smaller fish and mollusks so was unlikely to attack the group of four.
This isn’t to say they aren’t harmless – Porbeagle sharks have triple-pronged teeth and can measure up to 365cm, weighing up to 230kg.
In 2022 snorkeler was bitten by a blue shark in on the Cornish coast and was left ‘screaming for help.’
The woman was rushed to shore and later received minor plastic surgery.
Luckily, no shark attacks occurred in Cornwall this weekend.
