Surreal Video Captures What It Feels Like to Be Swallowed by a Shark And It's Not a Pretty Sight

On February 9 this year, an INSTA360 camera accompanied the Brazilian diver Andrea Ramos Nascimento (@andrea_ramos_nascimento) when she plunged into the turquoise blue waters of the Bahamas, off the coast of Freeport. The camera was supposed to capture some glimpses of the moment when she would feed tiger sharks prowling the warm waters. Little did the camera know that this casual diving trip would come across as a crash course in resurrection?

In footage that seems straight out from Jaws, Nascimento recorded how a shark swallowed the camera in its mouth while she was feeding it. Luckily, the camera’s fate was good that day because the shark ultimately spits it out. But all the while, people all over the world got to have a quick peep into the dark, muscly mouth of the shark. “Today the tiger shark tried to eat the Insta360,” Nascimento wrote. The footage opens with a crew of divers dressed in black diving suits and metal helmets, emitting trails of bubbles from the seafloor. All of them were positioned around a fiendish-looking black tiger shark.

The shark seemed too hungry as it rushed to eat their equipment. A diver stopped it by holding its head and then tossed some fish inside its mouth. But the shark became a little too greedy, appearing to grab the entire crate of snacks. For a moment, the screen turned black, seemingly because the shark gulped down the camera into its mouth. While the instrument kept recording whatever appeared, the viewers got a glimpse of the innards of the shark’s mouth, which appeared silver-blue on the screen. As the footage showed, the camera kept sloshing in the beast’s mouth for a few moments, revealing the fleshly bumps and troughs of its gills as well as some of its sharp teeth. 

At last, the shark opened its mouth, the slit of which revealed a blurry view of the divers facing it. The muscles of its mouth kept contracting, opening and closing the slit rhythmically. Then, in a sudden jerk, the shark spitted out the camera, jolting it out into the wild waters. Satisfied if not by the fish snacks, then probably by this adventurous episode, the shark dashed away, launching a trail of bubbles in the water. Before it scooted away from the divers, it also tried to latch onto the foot of one of the divers, likely grinning at the poor INSTA360 whose wire now slung in the safety of their hands. Whatever happened, thankfully the poor camera was spared.

Though utterly chilling, the footage became a topic of hilarious discussions among people who flooded the comment section with laughter and gasping emojis. “Now we all know what it looks like to be swallowed by a shark,” quipped @doraaa_966. @ice_bergy joked, “The shark must have offered $100,000 for 15% equity of the camera. This is it’s 15% share.”

Mimicking what this mischievous shark might be thinking, @dhruvin_027 wrote, “Hello guys welcome to my YouTube channel ‘Tiger the Shark’ and today we are gonna see the reaction of some uninvited guests!” As the bizarre story wraps up, it only leaves the INSTA360 feeling more powerful than ever, because it got to witness life from a perspective that humans will never be able to do, unless they want to come out alive and share it with the world. Unlike the metallic flesh of the camera, the squishy tissues of a human won’t return alive.

You can follow Andrea Ramos Nascimento (@andrea_ramos_nascimento) on Instagram for more surreal snapshots of the wild animal world.