But when a traveling Brit dived with a pod of dolphins off the coastline of New Zealand to tick another adventure off his bucket list, he got more than he bargained for.

A six-foot great white shark emerged nearby when Adam Walker, a swimmer from Nottingham, UK, was swimming with the creatures.

His experience with the cold-blooded animal swimming under him came as he was completing the 16-mile swim across Cook Strait.

” I happened to look down and saw a shark a few meters underneath me,” Adam said on his YouTube channel. “I attempted not to panic as I have an goal to effectively swim across.”

Adam claims that as the shark approached, the dolphins bordered him in a shielding ring to secure him from any potential attacks.

He told the Marlborough Express, “I wish to believe they were protecting me and guiding me home. This swim will stick with me forever.”

Dolphins usually protect one another versus shark attacks by banding together in pods; the courageous animals usually harass the predator and drive it away.

It’s debatable if the dolphins intervened to protect Adam, but they certainly managed to scare off the shark.

” I can not say whether the dolphins came as a pod to my help as they can not speak to me, however, I can claim that after a couple of minutes the shark disappeared and the dolphins stayed with me for another 50 minutes which was an amazing experience,”

said Adam

He said that his friend assured him that there were no sharks in the sea so close to the beach, which encouraged him to attempt to cross the strait, according to The Sun.

Adam said that the very best course of action when coming across a shark is not to panic.

He had formerly encountered sharks while swimming on two occasions, once in Hawaii and once in the Tsugaru channel in Japan.