A great white shark 'the size of a pickup truck' tore off the head of a diver as his friend watched in horror.
The gigantic predator targeted Randall Fry at the throat, tearing off his head and killing him instantly in California.
Reliving the horrific incident in 2004, his friend Cliff Zimmerman spoke about how he saw the sea around him turn red.
Randall, who was known to friends as Randy, loved the ocean and would spend a lot of his free time sport fishing and diving on the rocky Mendocino coast for abalone, a type of marine snail.
One Sunday afternoon, he went with his friends Cliff Zimmerman and Red Bartley in search of abalone.
He anchored in a sheltered cove at Kibesillah Rock, about 10 miles from Fort Bragg, the Daily Star reports.
Randy and Cliff began diving in shallow waters, around 15ft deep, 150ft from shore.
Cliff, who was 3ft away from Randy, relived the ordeal to the San Francisco Chronicle, saying: "I heard a noise, like 'whoosh,' like a submarine, like a boat going by fast. It was a shark.
"I knew it was a shark, it almost brushed me, I saw its dorsal fin, I don't know what kind it was - all I know is, it was big, big, it was big enough to kill."
Cliff watched with horror as the shark struck Randy before 'the sea turned red'.
He said the shark was 'massive' at around 18ft long and as big as a pickup truck.
Cliff said he was yelling but he could tell from the amount of blood he could see that the attack was fatal.
"I saw the pool of blood spread across the surface of the water and I knew Randy was gone," he added.
Cliff said it was the most dramatic thing he had ever experienced, adding that everything happened so fast.
Randy's headless body was recovered the next day but it was three weeks later that his severed head was found by a beachcomber.
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