So, sharks are fun. Everyone loves Shark Week, after all. And who doesn’t want to be Left Shark? What’s not fun: when sharks decide to pop out of the water and surprise people. What’s especially not fun: when those people are on surfboards, just feet away from said surprise shark.
Yes, that actually happened, just two days ago, in San Francisco, California. Surfer Nick Masturzo talked to Surfline about the incident, which took place at Ocean Beach shortly before 9 a.m. on a “dolphins and mermaids kind of day.” Masturzo was paddling over a wave when he saw the shark — described by Shark Research Committee Ralph Collier as a “seven-eight-foot juvenile Great White.”
“I saw it straight on,” Masturzo said. “And when I saw that white belly go up and the super defined white of pectoral fins, I knew what it was. I told everyone around me and went in. It was funny, some people were saying, ‘That’s not cool,’ but I would never say, ‘Shark’ on a small day to try to clear the water. If it was six-to-eight-foot, maybe.”
Get a load of this thing:
The best part about the incident: Only a handful of surfers actually came in, while around 30 stayed out in spite of Masturzo’s warning. Fun stuff!
The good news is, there’s never been a documented shark attack at Ocean Beach — the last time something like this happened was back in 2005, when a surfer was bumped by a shark. As for what the Great White was up to on Wednesday, Masturzo says he’s not sure, given the abundance of sea life for sharks to feed on in the area.
Collier offered a bit of insight into the situation. “It could be a form of communication between members of the species signifying dominance within a group,” he told Surfline, “similar to the ‘jousting’ between male elk and/or deer. [But] we simply do not know.”
Check out the footage of the incident, caught by Surfline’s Cam Rewind, below:
(H/T BroBible)
