A drone being operated by a West Australian lobster fisherman has been circled and snapped at by sharks after it crashed into the ocean.
Ricki Mouchemore was fishing with his brother Brad and father Peter near the Abrolhos Islands when he they decided to launch the drone.
"It was such a nice day that I thought it would be a good opportunity to send the drone up and get a bit of footage of us pulling some good cray pots," Mr Mouchemore said.
"It all went sour when the drone crashed, and in attempts to recover it the sharks had a go at it and that was the end of the drone."
He said there were a number of sharks circling the drone, and one came very close to it.
"It just pretty much came up to look at it, and tried to have a bit of a bite out of it," he said.
Fast work to rescue drone
Mr Mouchemore said the family had to work quickly to scoop the drone out of the water with a landing net, otherwise it would have been destroyed.
"It was pretty intense on the boat to get back there and rescue it," he said.
"The hardest part was the boat was still pulling the pot up, so we couldn't just get over there quickly, we had to go through that first. The whole time that was going on, the sharks were circling, literally."
He said about five to 10 sharks, usually bronze whalers, regularly followed the cray boat.
"They're always around, whether there is bait being thrown over or not, they're just drawn by the sound," he said.
"They're always causing trouble, even to the point where if you're pulling the pot rope up fast and they're hanging around the rope, their skin will touch the rope or even their teeth, and all of a sudden the rope's not as strong as it used to be."
Mr Mouchemore said he thought the shark may have thought the drone was food.
"Hopefully something delicious. It probably looked pretty weird to him I guess," he said.
"He'd carry on the rest of his day looking for something better to eat hopefully."
While Mr Mouchemore had not been planning to capture shark footage, the vision of the shark snapping at the drone in the water has been a topic of discussion.
"Probably the kicker is when the drone goes down and people jump back and say 'Oh no, that's the end of it'," he said.
Mr Mouchemore said he was hoping to get a new drone for Christmas because the ocean water had ruined his current drone.
