TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA/NBC News Channel) — A drone camera captured the moment a school of fish started to circle a lone swimmer off the coast of Lido Key.
“I captured someone swimming with some fish and didn’t think anything of it, and all of a sudden they start swimming in a perfect circle around him,” the drone photographer, Tristan Takx told SNN.
“So as I’m swimming I notice that I’m kind of going into a circle and the fish are sort of swimming faster and faster in the same direction as me which is really weird. Not in my 15 years of spear fishing did I ever experience that, especially holding a spear,” said the swimmer, Nick Perdue.
Perdue believes it was a sign from his father who died of a heart attack when he was just 13. He said his family would visit Lido Beach often, and the ocean was his father’s favorite place.
“My dad was a traveler, he was a surfer, he was a tennis pro, he was a lot of things. He loved the beach, he spent a lot of time surfing, he lived his life here, out on the ocean,” Perdue said.
He couldn’t believe the drone was there to capture the magical moment.
“And I look behind me and there’s a drone, and this has been probably 15 minutes of completely following me everywhere I went, completing entrapping me with this feeling of family and of home.”
Takx’s video was shared on TikTok and has been viewed more than 2 million times.