So far this winter, we’ve had El Nino to thank for excessively warm temperatures across much of the country, but as it turns out, we’ve got something else to thank it for: unexpected sharks! A fisherman casting his reel at the San Clemente pier this week received the surprise of a lifetime when he realized the fish he was struggling with was actually a 6-foot baby great white shark. A baby shark, yes, but still, a 6-foot goddamn shark!
A bystander named Penny Novak saw the man struggling and quickly pulled out her phone when she realized what was happening — recording part of what she says was a 15-minute struggle to release the shark from the line.
“When we looked over the edge, there it was,” Novak said. “Its head was fully out of the water, its mouth was open. It was just like something out of a movie.”
“Then finally, it went under the water for a little bit. We all thought maybe it died, and then all of the sudden it came back up and we heard like a big, loud crunch, and then it like moved around a little bit and broke free and then took off,” said Novak.
While that sounds absolutely terrifying, NBC 7 in Los Angeles consulted with a Scripps Institution of Oceanography marine biologist, who said that the shark was fighting for its life, because sharks need to keep moving forward in order to breathe.
Apparently, though, these sightings are not actually that unusual:
“We’ve actually detected some tagged baby white sharks off of Scripps Pier in La Jolla,” said Nosal. “So they’re around, and we normally don’t see them, and that’s a testament to the fact that they’re not really interested in us and they typically keep their distance.”
Well, that’s a relief. We’ll all be sure to keep it in mind when we’re never going into the ocean again.
(Via NBC Los Angeles via BroBible)
