Brings to mind the movie line uttered by Roy Schneider playing Brody in Jaws… “you’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Awesome pic. You learn to balance well very quickly in that situation. I have been in a similar situation but NOT with a great white!!!
What goes on in a great white's brain in these situations...?! "Ooooh look, is that a tiny little yellow kayak up ahead?!" [Internal check] Am I hungry? [Internal check] You're always hungry, better to be sated than hungry - it's our motto. [Internal check] It's yellow. Looks like a man-made object (sure doesn't look like any fish / seal / other prey). [Internal check] Man-made objects: car-number plates (sometimes yellow) - yuk! [Internal check] Man-made objects: buoys (as opposed to Japanese boys) - double-yuk! [Internal check] Man-made objects: surfboards (they're floating dinner trays) - hmmmm! "Hehe, I'm just going to sneak up behind and make that little kayak ride my bow-wave! Ooooh what fun, is it going to porpoise up and down right in front of me?!" Message to [Internal check] GET LOST, OK...! PS. I once "caught" a Tiger shark using live bait. When I eventually pulled it up to the surface (or more realistically-speaking, when it decided to swim up perhaps to find out why there appeared to be a line attached to his snack), I swear that it was longer than the 4m Zodiac I was fishing from. Coming slowly to within 2 or 3m of the Zodiac, he dived and cut the steel tracer cleanly through. I never went fishing with live bait in those waters again. In fact, until I completely gave up fishing a few months later, all my fishing was done from the main-deck of a 55m motor yacht...!
I say fake. Why is the sun shinning on the kayakers shoulders and not on the sharks fins? There is also a blurry area above and between the kayaker and the shark. I say fake.
Did you check out the snopes sited reference in posting #3 ...and from there http://www.whitesharktrust.org/pages/mediaarticle/media26.html
I did. If you look at the sharks dorsal fin it is casting a shadow on its right side and the kayaker's right side is clearly in the sun.
Your Boat is too BIG BTW, I posted a companion to this 'small' subject here at How to Tell "Your Boats too BIG" http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/general-yachting-discussion/7411-your-boats-too-big.html
If you look at that second photo from the same vantage point it appears as thought the shadow of of his paddle is also cast on the right hand side...so maybe you had the sun's angle wrong in your first anaylsis?? I don't pretend to be a photo expert
Im no photo expert but I play one on the internet. One of the guys in our office pointed out we could be looking at reflections also. He also said in Cape Town the sun is always in the northern sky. Look at the blurry section that runs top to bottom between the shark and the Kayaker.
Could that be due to some sort of page fold, or whatever it is in these shots from the magazine? http://www.whitesharktrust.org/pages/mediaarticle/media25.html
I reciently read a book called "Devils Teeth" pretty interesting, here is a link to their site http://www.devilsteeth.net/videoclip_wmp768.htm