A little girl had a terrifying encounter with a shark during a day out at the beach with her mum.
Six-year-old Anela Rezentes was swimming near the shore when she felt something flapping about behind her.
The youngster turned to see fins and the sharp nose of a shark’s face shoot up from the water.
It then bumped her from behind and, realising what the creature was, she screamed and ran back to shore.
Her mum Sheri Gouveia, who had been filming her daughter swimming, had no idea at first what had startled the youngster until she watched the video back on her phone.
Ms Gouveia told Good Morning America : “When I watched the video back I saw the fins flapping around and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, she wasn’t lying. It was a shark.”
Anela had been enjoying an afternoon at Kalama Beach, Hawaii, with her mum when she felt something push into her and lift her slightly from the water.
As soon as she saw the fish she yelled ‘shark’ and ran as fast as she could towards the shore, with the shark flapping around behind her and another swimmer nearby.
Video obtained by KHON 2 shows the moment Anela ran in a complete panic.
She was so petrified she told the TV station: “My soul left my body,” adding, “I was very scared.”
Ms Gouveia said her daughter was “hysterical” when she got out of the water and had only realised later what had happened after she’d caught the animal flailing behind Anela in the phone footage.
“She just started freaking out, saying ‘Mum, there was a shark in the water!’” Ms Gouveia recalled. “I kind of dropped everything as I thought, ‘no way’. There was no way – this would not have happened to us.
“I’m just so glad that she got there that day with all ten fingers and two hands.”
Luckily Anela, and her fellow swimmers at the beach, were unharmed. The brave girl also said it hadn’t put her off going swimming again.
Experts who have reviewed the footage said it’s believed the species of shark which bumped into the six-year-old is a blacktip - which mostly feeds on fish and isn’t harmful to humans.
But sharks can sometimes mistake people for food.
Just last week surfer Adrienne Wikso was bitten by a shark in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
“He just jumped out of the water and grabbed my foot and started thrashing around with my foot and shaking me like a rag doll,” she told Good Morning America. “It wasn’t just a bite and release. He wanted my foot. He was pulling me off my board.”
Experts say shark incidents are more likely around beaches during this time of year in the US because the warmer weather means fish, their main source of food, migrate to shallower waters.
