This is some real clickbait.
A diver has revealed how not to become a shark’s dinner, but her advice — and up-close encounter — may have you trembling in your fins.
Kayleigh Nicole Grant, who runs Kaimana Ocean Safari in Hawaii, posted a startling video on TikTok, where she goes by @mermaidkayleigh, showing people how to prevent a shark attack.
Instead of panicking and swimming away from sharks, she said people should stare into a shark’s eyes — and then reach out and touch them if need be.
“Sharks have natural instincts and splashing, panicking, and swimming away from them can trigger their prey drive. It’s better to stay calm, stand your ground, make eye contact, and if necessary push them away,” she captioned the clip, which has more than 16.4 million views since being posted in mid-November.
In the video, she demonstrates how her swimming away from a tiger shark activates its “prey drive” and sends the shark barreling toward her.
Once the shark gets closer, though, she grabs its nose and pushes it to the side.
Commenters were shocked by how swimmingly her demonstration went and didn’t think they’d be able to keep their cool, should they find themselves in the same situation.
“Really nice tip, thank you. Unfortunately, I would immediately go into cardiac arrest so I’m unable to assert dominance regardless,” one person said.
“I think if a shark was following me I’d forget how to breathe,” said another.
“You can tell by its eyes it was definitely prepared to strike too ????,” wrote a third.
The Post reached out to Grant for comment.
Grant’s advice is backed up by other experts who say that splashing can trigger a shark’s prey drive.
“Refrain from excess splashing, particularly in a single spot. Sharks can hear the low-frequency sounds from splashing and may investigate to see if there is a fish/prey in distress,” the Florida Museum explained on their website.
While Grant uses her hand to push away the shark in the video, that should be a last resort, according to experts.
“Use whatever you have at your disposal (surfboard, dive gear, fishing equipment) to avoid using your bare hands to attack the shark,” explained the Victorian Fisheries Authority.
“If you must use your hands, concentrate on attacking the eyes, nose and gills,” the site continued.
So far this year, there have been 76 publicly reported and verified shark attacks, including nine provoked and 10 fatal, according to Tracking Sharks.
Shark bites can be either provoked or unprovoked — with the latter being more common.
“Provoked bites occur when a human initiates interaction with a shark in some way. These include instances when people are bitten after harassing or trying to touch sharks, bites occurring while unhooking or removing a shark from a fishing net, and so forth,” explained the Florida Museum.
“Unprovoked bites are defined as incidents in which a bite on a live human occurs in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation of the shark. These represent the most natural examples of shark behavior and are our most widely used data category in research. These events include; mistaken identity hit and run during low visibility conditions, investigation, and on infrequent occasions predation,” the museum continued.