It is scary how close a shark can get to a human unnoticed.
The world's most feared predator is without question the great white shark. Made famous by TV and famous films like Jaws, the animal has something of an undeserved bloodthirsty reputation. They are fearsome predators, but they do not target humans and they are not the mindless eating machines they are made out to be in popular culture.
Still, that does not mean we want to get into the water with one anytime soon. One common thread with almost every great white attack is that the victim never saw it coming. Even in instances where sharks have grabbed divers or underwater spear fishermen, the shark almost always goes unnoticed by the person until it is too late.
For as large as they are, they are extremely stealthy, as many pieces of drone footage now reveal. Such is the case with this video out of South Africa. The operator is filming great whites and dolphins swimming in shallow waters when a man unknowingly paddles past a decent sized white in shallow waters.
The great white in this video was not far beneath the surface, yet at the same time, it went completely unnoticed by the paddleboarder. Of course, he could have had tunnel vision while looking at the dolphins, but this is not the first instance we have seen of people being extremely close to these predators without realizing it. When you are in the water, it is much harder to see these big fish coming.
This same concept is what made movies like Jaws so frightening. It allows your imagination to run wild. When you are in the water, it is what you cannot see that is scarier than seeing the animal itself.
It is a frightening thought that you could swim by one of these sharks without knowing it. However, take a little comfort in the fact that the shark does not seem to notice or care much about the human at all. It just goes to prove what many scientists have been saying for years. Many sharks have probably never seen a human before and because of that, we do not normally register as a food item. While that is comforting to know, we would still be a little freaked out had we been that paddleboarder in the video!
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
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