When you spend any amount of time in the ocean, you end up rationalizing why you won’t get attacked by a shark. You might tell yourself: We’re not their food source. They’re looking for fish or seals. Are they even hungry?
And then something like this happens: A shark in Monterey Bay attacked a man in a sea kayak, a harrowing incident caught on film by two onlookers.
The couple who filmed the attack, Gene Mace and his wife, called authorities, who apparently dispatched a Coast Guard vessel. But before the vessel arrived, a sailboat captained by Lt. Cmdr. Kyle Franklin came to the kayaker’s aid, scooping him out of the frigid water. The encounter occurred on March 18 but only surfaced on the Internet recently.
For a few very tense minutes, the kayaker, separated from the kayak, swims frantically from the watercraft as the shark drags the boat around. Given the distance at which the footage is shot, it’s hard to tell how large the animal is, though the distance between its dorsal and tail fins appears large, perhaps as long as the kayak itself.
