What was the scariest “We need to leave… now” gut feeling that you’ve ever experienced? 🤔

Surfing a fairly secluded reef-break, offshore across a channel. This place is in a very southern state of Australia.

I was surfing with only one other guy - we were trading waves and getting to know each other in between sets.

I asked what he did for a living and he was a marine biologist. We’d both recently moved to the area and were new to surfing it as well.

Despite it being extremely good surf, after 40 mins he says, “I don’t like this, something feels off, I feel like I’m being watched, like I’m bait”.

I didn’t want to leave as it was excellent surf, but this guy was a marine biologist so I took his instinct as a sign to play it safe. We paddled back across the deep channel together as quickly as we could without panicking

We noticed a 15ft inflatable boat pull up near the reef and hang around for a bit without much thought. Later that night while looking at my social media, I read about three fisherman at the same location we were at that morning, at the same time - in their boat; as they pulled up to check their cray pots on the beach side of the reef, they were circled twice by a great white shark that was as big as their boat.
That guy most likely saved me from a horrible experience that day.