Diver miraculously survives terrifying moment 16ft shark smashed into glass tank

A diver using a glass tank to film underwater narrowly avoided the jaws of death after a shark came up and crashed through it.

Fans of the Discovery Channel will be familiar with Shark Week, and the people who put it all together really do lay their lives on the line at times to capture the incredible animal behaviors on camera.

Jimi Partington had been filming for a documentary called Great White Open Ocean when he got much closer to a great white shark than anyone would really want to.

Footage shows Jimi filming underwater as he sat in a plexiglass tank which allowed him to direct the camera beneath the surface of the sea.

Another camera underwater was able to catch the terrifying encounter as a shark took interest in Jimi and attacked.

Discovery Channel

Interestingly the shark didn't go in all teeth and chompy death at first, instead giving the diver's glass tank a forceful bump before eventually charging right at it.

It corroborates the observations of many ocean life experts who've seen that sharks don't always go in for the kill right away.

Instead, the initial attack was 'not all predatory', with the shark's initial intention appearing to be investigating exactly what this strange thing was and to push it away from the territory.

When the shark did go in for a proper attack, it smashed right through the glass tank as though it wasn't there, and Jimi narrowly evaded being caught in it's mouth.

Had he been caught in the shark's mouth he could very possibly have died, bitten to bits by the many teeth of a shark gobbling up prey.

Discovery Channel

Instead, Jimi had a narrow escape from the shark and an incredible piece of footage which helps demonstrate what sharks do when they encounter something unknown in the wild.

The diver said he 'felt a bump' against the glass tank and had to ask the boat what exactly had just hit him, with them confirming that a shark had taken interest in him.

The shark was believed to be about 16ft long, so not exactly Jaws territory but still the sort of thing that'd make you likely to turn the ocean yellow and brown if it came at you.

He was lucky that the shark's attention was diverted by the glass tank it destroyed as that meant it narrowly missed Jimi, who clutched onto the remains of the shattered tank before sticking his head underwater to see where the shark was.

The diver then swam back to the boat and wisely got out of the water.