Divers survive terrifying encounter with great white shark while crayfish hunting in WA

Two WA divers got the shock of their lives last week when they emerged from a cave while hunting for crayfish and came face-to-face with a great white shark.

Tim Ryan and Andy Nelson just thought they were going for a dive last Friday at Coventry Reef, about 55km south of Perth but things quickly took a turn as the shark began to circle the pair.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Divers film terrifying encounter with great white shark.

Tim came out first and decided he could not head back into the cave as they would lose sight of the predator making their situation even more precarious.

On Monday, Tim and Andy joined Monique Wright on Sunrise to reveal the tricks they used to survive the terrifying encounter.

Wright asked: “You say there’s five things you should do during a shark encounter. You did all five. What were they?”

“The first one is, don’t start splashing around. Don’t try and swim away from it. Try and stay vertical in the water column and make yourself look as big as possible,” Tim said.

“The second is to keep your eye on the shark, so they like to sneak up from behind you. So, if you keep your eye contact with the animal it will know you are watching it, that you can’t be snuck up on.

“You need to keep your heart rate as low as you possibly can. You need to keep your breathing rate, particularly for us drivers because you generate a lot of bubbles and keep your breathing rate down.”

Tim said he could not quite believe what he saw when he came out of the cave and spotted the apex predator.

“It’s startling to pop up out of your little hole and find a great white staring at you.

“Long story short, it circled around repeatedly for five minutes. Started getting a bit sneaky towards the end, it was hiding behind rocks and changed its behaviour a bit.

“We just kind of waited, waited, waited and then eventually it left. I think when Andy popped up out of his cave that’s what finally scared her off,” he said.

Andy said seeing the shark coming towards him was life-changing.

“I was oblivious to this while I was in the cave while Tim was having his five minutes of excitement,” he said.

“(Tim) gives the rather enthusiastic shark symbol on (his) head and I saw the girl behind me with all her gloriousness. Rather exciting.”

Once the shark departed the pair were able to swim back to the boat, but they said that was the scariest moment of the encounter because they could not see where the predator actually was.

However, safely back in the boat, they just burst out laughing.

And far from being scared off by the predator, the pair returned the reef later that day.