Featured Image Credit: David G Woodward via Youtube
By Sarah Sharkey
David Woodward recently posted this video of a shark encounter on YouTube. He was surfing alone at the Bluffs Campground in San Onofre State Park, which is near San Clemente. At the beginning of the video, he explains that he was testing out the GoPro camera.
He first saw the shark in a wave next to him and said “He was about 10 feet swimming from left to right in front of me.” As a surfer, he had seen sharks in the water so he wasn’t too concerned about the shark until “he turned abruptly in my direction. At that point, I spun my board to get out of there.”
Then we can see Woodward furiously paddling to the safety of the shore. We can see the great white shark in the water directly behind Woodward in the video. BUT he did not realize the shark was still near him until he saw this footage later.
It is crazy to think that a great white shark was so close to him in the water. Thankfully, nothing happened. Woodward wrote that he did not believe that the shark had any bad intentions, but the curiosity displayed by this particular shark was disconcerting.