Watch The Moment A Giant Shark Circles A Cruise Ship Sparking ‘Megalodon’ Fears Among Tourists

A giant shark cruising the east coast sparked fears among seafaring college students when it slowly circled their sailboat near the surface of an ocean.

The footage was captured and uploaded here on Tiktok by student Alex Albrecht on Tuesday.

Albrecht spotted the creature while doing a Sea Education Association program on marine biodiversity on the boat, which sailed from Florida to Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

In the video which has since been watched over 30 million times, the tourists can be heard shouting “Oh my god” and “Woah” while Mr Albrecht filming the dramatic scene from up in the mast simply says: “Holy f**k”.

He captioned the clip: “Sailed six weeks in the Atlantic saw this big f*****g shark.”

“We could climb up into the rigging whenever we wanted, and I was lucky enough to see the shark from up there. When I first saw it, I was frozen with awe, then yelled down ‘big ass shark’ to the people on the deck below,” Albrecht told Newsweek.

“I’d never seen one before, but a shipmate saw one from aloft a few days before. We thought it was about 25 feet long but [it] easily could have been a bit longer. We saw it for probably less than five minutes before it swam away.”

Watch the video below:

Luckily for the students on board the cruise ship, the creature was harmless. It has since been identified by many Tiktok users as a basking shark.

The students listed the sighting on a blog earlier this month as one of their favorite experiences of the voyage.

“There have been so many incredible moments to define this trip, but today there were two moments when the collective Corwith Cramer stoke tank was absolutely overflowing: two giant basking sharks swimming along with us and whales lifting their tails out of the water to wave hello to all those who tried their hand at whale communication,” noted bloggers in the May 15 post.

Basking shark is considered to be the second-largest fish in the world. They can grow to about 40-feet-long and spend a lot of time near the surface of the ocean, feeding off of small fish and plankton.

They can be spotted from May to September around the southwest of England, Wales, Isle of Man, and the west coast of Scotland.

Despite the harmless nature of the animal, many TikTok users who watched the footage commented on the size of the shark with some likening it to the extinct “Megalodon” which grew up to 18 metres in length.

A commenter said: “Them standing that close gives me anxiety.”

While another asked: “Isn't that megalodon?”

Basking sharks are endangered and protected in many countries of the world.

What Is Megalodon?

Megalodon is an extinct species of shark that lived approximately 23 to 3.6 million years ago (mya), during the Early Miocene to the Pliocene.

A species of Megalodon called Otodus megalodon was not only the biggest shark in the world, but one of the largest fish ever to exist. Estimates suggest it grew to between 15 and 18 metres in length, three times longer than the largest recorded great white shark.

They preyed on large things, probably whales, and their teeth and jaws were built for grabbing and breaking bones and they also swam very fast.

Fossils of the species have been found in Europe, Africa, America and Australia.