Kayaker recounts insane caught-on-camera close encounter with great white shark
A pair of California kayakers had a scary, caught-on-video run-in with a massive great white shark that got too close for comfort last week while they were fishing off the coast of San Francisco.
The video shows the shark’s dorsal fin poking out of the water behind John-Patrick Thomas’ kayak while the two were fishing for link cod and halibut in Half Moon Bay on Aug. 6 — their first time out on the water.
“It’s disconcerting because it’s a new experience for me, not so much that the shark was doing anything scary,” Thomas’ pal and fellow kayaker Ian Walters told Fox affiliate KTVU-TV on Tuesday.
“It’s big, but I felt lucky and it was a special experience more than anything else.”
According to KRON-TV News, the shark was longer than the 13-foot kayaks Walters and Thomas were paddling around the bay in — and began circling around them for a few minutes.
“The crazy thing was, the dorsal would move, and the tail would move much later so you would get a sense of the size of the animal,” Walters told the outlet.
Walters, who teaches sixth-grade history and science in Oakland, said he now has a shark tale to share with his students.
“Everyone grows up thinking the great white sharks are this mindless killing machine,” he told KTVU.” But they play this really important role and generally they don’t have any interest in killing anyone.”
