Pie-eater: Shark eats mince pie thrown into water during shark cage diving in Bluff

A seagull also had a lucky escape during the incident. Photo / Rose Gullery

A pie-eating great white shark has stunned and delighted a group on a shark cage diving adventure in Bluff today.

Auckland woman Rose Gullery emailed the Herald tonight to share the fishy tale, which occurred during a shark cage dive trip with Shark Dive NZ.

"Today I did a Shark Cage Dive in Bluff. It was a successful day - min. 3 great white sharks for about 5 hours viewing time," she wrote.

"We had a great moment where we threw a [mince] pie into the ocean and a great white jumped out and ate it."

Gullery said the Shark Cage Dive NZ tour provided everyone on board with a meat pie for lunch.

"We had a couple pies left over and they were thrown into the ocean. One of my fellow divers said, imagine if a shark ate one of the pies.

"I picked up my camera and started recording, sure enough a Great White shark jumped up and grabbed the pie."

A seagull also had a lucky escape during the incident. Photo / Rose Gullery

Gullery couldn't be contacted tonight, but footage of the incident uploaded online showed a seagull on the surface of the water scarpering just before the shark lunges for the pie.

"Oh, yuss," someone says as the moment unfolds.

A man on the boat then asks "did they just eat a pie?", referring to the shark, as others laugh.

According to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, breaching - which is what the shark did when it came up for the discarded pie - is relatively rare because the shark has to use so much energy to propel itself.

"Great white sharks breach in order to catch fast-moving prey like seals. Swimming fast at the surface, sharks can reach 40 miles per hour (64km/h) and fly 10 feet (3m) into the air."