White sharks aren't exactly uncommon along the Malibu coast although, like movie stars, the alpha predators are pretty good at staying out of sight, and are only occasionally seen and photographed.
Now Los Angeles surfers, kayakers and ocean goers are on edge after local surf shop owner Randy Wright captured startling photos of a juvenile great white shark jumping completely out of the water. On October 3, Wright was kayaking off the coast of Malibu doing volunteer field research for the Shark Research Committee, a private foundation dedicated to white shark activity along the west coast.
The first photo of the sequence shows the shark at its peak height. Armed with his Canon 40D digital camera he anchored just southeast of the surfers in the beginner surf break at Sunset. Wright waited, hoping against hope to capture proof of what several surfers have claimed to see in fleeting glimpses: a white shark jumping completely out of the water.
At 8:47 Wright heard a loud splash but caught only a glimpse of a splash as he turned in the direction of the noise. All he could do was hope it would jump again. According to the Shark Research website, ' at 9:00 AM exactly, I noticed some movement towards my left and quickly turned the camera and fired off 4 shots of something airborne and splashing.' Not satisfied with those photos, Wright changed his position and waited an hour, but the wait paid off: "At exactly 10:00 AM I heard another splash on my starboard side, towards the Bel Air Bay Club. I missed the breach, but shot the remnants of the splash."
Photo two offers a perfect glimpse of the juvenile's profile. When Wright made it back to his surf shop he took the camera out of its water housing and downloaded dozens of images, hoping for the best: ' Our jaws literally dropped when image #73, 74, 75, 76 appeared' a breaching shark in mid-air!'
The shark that Wright captured was not as potentially dangerous as other sharks that have been seen along the Malibu coast of late. The last fatal attack there was in 1989, when two UCLA students disappeared while kayaking near Point Dume. Tamara McAllister, 24, was found dead with a shark bite to her leg, while Roy Jeffrey Stoddard, 24, was never found.
In July of this year, a local cinematographer named Dave Ogle also got lucky with his camera. While filming an ad for a local helicopter company, Ogle looked down and saw a 14 ' " 16 foot white shark swimming within half a mile of surfers at Surfrider Beach.
Just before splash down, the shark is less than 100 yards from the surf zone. Southern California surfers have been paying a lot more attention to shark sightings after last year's deadly attack on a swimmer in Solana Beach, CA.. Dave Martin was swimming just outside the surf zone last April when a white shark bit him.
Up the coast, surfers around San Onofre have been spotting a juvenile shark in their lineup for the past two years. Early on, they nicknamed the shark "Fluffy," but the size estimates of fluffy keep growing, and some are saying its only a matter of time before she gets curious and starts nibbling.
Below is video shot in July of a large great white shark cruising just off the coast of Malibu.
