Big shark bites down on deck of boat off New Zealand

May 31 (UPI) -- A man preparing to swim with sharks off New Zealand captured the moment one of the "unpredictable" predators clamped its jaws down on his boat.

The video, recorded off the coast of Tairua, Coromandel, shows the mako shark with its head out of the water, biting down on the deck of the filmer's boat.

"I was about to jump in the water to swim with this mako shark, and this is the welcome we get," the filmer wrote.

The man said his intention was to change perceptions of sharks as inherently dangerous.

"Mako sharks are the fastest and most unpredictable shark in the sea, but they are also threatened with extinction due to commercial and recreational overfishing," he wrote. "The aim of the game here is to get in the water, cageless, to show people what sharks really are and change people's perspectives through stimulating visual imagery like this, laced with scientific information."