KAWAIHAE, Hawaii (KHON2) — On Thursday, Feb. 13, three scuba divers went diving about five miles off the Kohala Coast.

Jessica Glazner, a scuba instructor for 10 years, said the visibility hadn’t been good the last few days due to a west-northwest swell, but the two other divers still wanted to dive that morning.

So they jumped in the water just before 8 a.m., and then one of the divers desperately tried to get to Glazner’s attention.

“I hear my diver behind me grunting through his regulator and, I turn around and my first thought was awesome a tiger shark, which is also super rare to see when scuba diving, and then a split second later my brain was like that’s not a tiger shark that’s a great white,” Glazner said.

She said the shark was about 10-feet long and kept checking out the boat, and then swam around them a few times.

“When you’re in the water with the most powerful apex predator on our planet, it’s a very humbling experience and so cool and really no words to explain what that’s like because you’re really at their mercy,” she continued.

She said the shark didn’t show any aggression and swam off after about five minutes.

“I’m still buzzing from it, and just cannot believe I’m one of the very few lucky people who’ve gotten to see one in Hawaii,” Glazner said.

Dr. Michael Domeier has been tagging and tracking white sharks for decades, and tagged other Hawaii visitors like Deep Blue and Lono.

“There’s a lot more white sharks here than people realize,” Domeier, who is also the director of The Marine Conservation Science Institute, said. “it’s just often people aren’t in the water to see them, or they’re a little bit off shore.”

One of the male sharks he tagged five years ago was spotted off Molokai last week. He said the shark, named Lono by Molokai residents, has made the same migration from California to Molokai every year.

He said he was surprised by the small size of the white shark in Jessica’s video and believes it was a juvenile female and said the shape of the nose and tail shows it’s a great white shark.

Domeier said even though some great white sharks make the long journey to the islands, scientists aren’t sure why.

“There’s some theories: they’re mating offshore to breed, and then personally I think there’s some kind of food source out there they want to capitalize on, there’s so much food on the mainland, they have no reason to leave but they do,” he said.

Experts said the best time to catch a glimpse of a great white in Hawaii is during the winter months, and although it coincides with humpback whale season, they said it’s extremely difficult for a single shark to kill a mom or calf, and could be waiting for the opportunity to run into an injured whale.

“In the summer there could still be some pregnant females around, but very few because only the females give birth every other year and they’re of course not all in sync and only a small fraction will come all the way to Hawaii,” Domeier explained.

Glazner is just overjoyed she had her GoPro still attached to her gear when the moment happened.

“It was a really special moment, once in a lifetime, and I will cherish the moment forever,” she said.