ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. — A rare moment was caught on camera that's now gaining lots of attention on social media.
A fisherman captured an unusual interaction between a bull shark and alligator while fishing along the St. Lucie River.
David Zinn was out fishing along the river on May 28 when he said both the gator and shark got a little to close for comfort.
An ordinary fishing trip quickly turned into a rare encounter for Zinn and his stepfather over the holiday weekend
"Definitely not expecting anything like that," Zinn said.
After about 15 minutes along the St. Lucie River, they landed a bite.
"I'm like, 'Oh, I got something that's putting up a nice fight.' And I thought, 'Oh, this is probably a shark,'" Zinn said.
He was right. It was a bull shark that managed to dodge an attack from a gator looking for its next meal.
"I'm like, 'Oh, he might just, you know, bite the shark and start spinning him around.' And do you know I was waiting for the full barrel roll death and all of that?" Zinn said.
Instead, the gator had other plans and decided to back off.
"I think it realized last second, like, 'Oh, that thing has teeth, too.' I better not," Zinn said.
While caught off guard, Zinn was able to snap a few pictures of the rare glimpse and he posted them online. They've already been shared more than 3,000 times on Facebook.
"That's pretty phenomenal because they usually don't occur in the same places. But in this case, they did right up in the river there," Mark Perry, the executive director of the Florida Oceanographic Society, said.
Although the encounter is unusual, Perry said it's a reminder to always be careful and aware that both sharks and alligators enjoy the river environment.
"Both the sharks and the alligators are fairly dangerous to humans, and so if you're in the water with either one of them, you could get into a lot of problems," Zinn said. "Where you think, 'Oh, it's nice and safe.' There's two animals right there that are there up there in the river system and are pretty dangerous."
This isn't the first time the unlikely pair has been spotted on the Treasure Coast. A viral video captured last year along the Indian River Lagoon showed an alligator and bull shark swimming side-by-side.