With a top speed of 35 miles per hour, the Atlantic tarpon is among the top ten fastest fish in the world. But as you can see here, even this incredibly quick swimmer can't outrun the Ferrari of the ocean: the great hammerhead shark. 

The clip was filmed off the coast of Florida recently by Tampa local Ashley Moore. Along with her husband, Moore had set off with fishing charter Captain Rob Gorta when the vessel crew spotted some splashing nearby. Curious, they motored in for a closer look, only to find an endangered great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran) closing in on a school of tarpon.  

Despite their big-screen reputation as "Flipper killers", great hammerheads are extremely shy and elusive. And as their numbers continue to decline, spotting one of this size is becoming increasingly rare. "I was shaking," Gorta told local news station BayNews9. "You don't know what's going on because you're just concentrated on filming and when you actually watch the footage, that's when you realise what happened. [It] was just an incredible moment."

With decades of experience behind him, Gorta knew to cut the motor as soon he saw the shark so as to avoid any unintentional damage to the endangered animal. But the stationary boat also provided temporary refuge for the shark's prey when it opted to jump into the back of Gorta's vessel.

Funnily enough, it was the tarpon that Gorta and his crew were afraid of most. "It's a fish that's 100 pounds," he explains. "I'm lucky it jumped back in the water because it could break a lot of things. A tarpon can seriously hurt a person flopping around like that. It could've knocked one of us in the water."

Though hammerheads can't match a tarpon's speed for long, their extremely flexible spines allow for superb manoeuvrability and quick rotations in the water column. They're one of the most agile fish in the sea, which comes in handy when feeding on their favourite prey: stingrays. Just check out the turn radius on these guys: