Diver recalls terrifying encounter with a four-metre Great White shark – and the five things all swimmers should do if they end up in the same situation

A diver has captured the terrifying moment he came face to face with a huge white shark circling him while his buddy searched for crayfish in a cave.

Tim Ryan posted an eight-minute video of the heartbreaking encounter on YouTube after going crawfish fishing with his friend Andy Nelson at Safety Bay, near Coventry Reef, about 55 kilometers south of Perth.

Just before the Great White dove, Mr Nelson swam into a cave to look for crayfish and stayed there for five minutes, unaware that a four-metre shark was swimming around his friend who was low on oxygen.

Mr Ryan was waiting outside the cave for his mate when the ‘bloody big shark’ appeared.

“Don, don, don, don literally and hilariously came right into my head when I saw the shark jump out,” Ryan said.

”’Oh my god, it’s Jaws” I thought and a second later I was terrified, and a second after that I thought, I have to deal with this and this is how I do it.

“I did my best to keep it under control.”

Mr. Ryan said there are five things you should do during a shark encounter, and he did all five.

“So you obviously shouldn’t splash or flutter and become attractive to the animal,” he said.

‘You have to keep eye contact with it at all times, otherwise it will sneak up on you, you have to stay vertical in the water, then you have to keep your breathing and heart rate low.

“I think I’ve done all those things.”

Mr Ryan said the Great White was just a few meters away and was swimming so close to him he could have touched it.

“There were a number of times it swam over my head, and even if it swam next to me, I could have reached out and touched it,” he said.

Diver Andy Nelson was looking for crayfish in a cave, unaware that a four-metre shark had been circling his buddy Tim Ryan for five minutes. Image: supplied.

“He circled me for a solid five minutes, and oh my God, he came in and made moves on me for five minutes.

‘It wasn’t until the very last moment that Andy jumped out of the cave and the second person in the water scared him off.’

Mr Ryan said the swim back to the boat was ‘pretty terrible’ as they could no longer see the shark and its oxygen levels were extremely low.

Mr Nelson swam back to find the boat and found the quickest way back, but Mr Ryan had to keep turning around to see if he could spot the shark after they lost sight of it in the water.

“Well, that’s the point where the adrenaline levels went up a bit because that’s their whole act, they go into the darkness and sneak around and come charging at you from behind,” Mr Ryan said.

“It’s the one you don’t see that you should really worry about, especially if you’re sure there’s one nearby.”

“You just turn around and it’s coming at you at twenty knots, you know.”

Mr Ryan said that when they finally got back to the boat, the pair just laughed.

“It was all quite tense, you know, it took probably half an hour to get the heart rate and breathing down again,” he said.

“Andy had no idea at the time that I had a full five minutes with the shark circling me. He was quite surprised about the whole thing, we just shook our heads for a while.”

The 13-foot white shark swam close to the divers, with Tim Ryan telling 9 News it was directly above him with its mouth slightly open and close enough to touch. Image: supplied.