Couple takes homemade shark cages for a dip
Raw video: Lifeguard on North Carolina's Outer Banks calls beachgoers back to the shore
Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
Amid the uptick in headline-making shark attacks, one couple in North Carolina tried to protect themselves against a possible attack by crafting a bizarre-looking contraption to ward off any relatives of Jaws.
While enjoying a sunny day at the Outer Banks, Jordan Cutrell captured a video of Sandi and Scott Bergman entering the ocean with what appeared to homemade shark cages.
“These people are going swimming in their shark proof cages,” a voice narrates at the top of the video. “They don’t wanna get bit.”
The Bergmans made it waist-deep into the water before a lifeguard comes running to the shore, blowing his whistle. Despite the local stir they caused, the beachgoers say their cages, which they constructed from plastic and PVC piping, were just meant as a light-hearted joke.
“We went out there with the intention of filming a spoof about this guy who comes up with something called Block Jaw. It’s your own personal shark cage,” Sandi Bergman told WRIC Richmond. “It (was) very crowded; it’s July, and as soon as we set up immediately people started to watch us.”
As of Wednesday morning, Cutrell’s video had already hit over 250,000 views on YouTube so the Bergmans were clearly on to something.
It comes as vacationers are increasingly wary of getting in the water in the mid-Atlantic region. In July, a man swimming about 30 feet from the shore along Ocracoke in the Outer Banks was bitten by a shark— which was the seventh attack in three weeks.
“The reactions are all over the place,” said Bergman. “Some people are saying ‘these people are idiots- how could they think that would protect them in any way?’ Others say, It’s great, I love it, I want one.”
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