[vidroll id=”theinertia_lg_yt”]//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xanitVzUmbk[/vidroll]
Over the weekend, a Santa Barbara man was assaulted for a harrowing 15 minutes by a hammerhead shark. Mark McCracken was fishing for Bonito half a mile off Gaviota State Beach on his kayak when the “super aggressive” shark began repeatedly head-butting his kayak. As he retaliated against the fish by bashing it with his paddle, McCracken filmed parts of the lengthy encounter.
The shark “followed me all the way into about three feet of water,” McCracken told NBC. “Even after I got out of my kayak and made it to the beach he was sitting right there…it was pretty creepy.”
Luckily, McCracken was able to escape the incident unscathed. But this encounter comes just a few weeks after two similar incidences occurred in San Diego. The kayakers in those encounters also had yellow boats, a color known in the diving community as “yum yum yellow.” And Mick Fanning also had a yellow board during his bare-knuckled brawl with a Great White, which he later swore never to use on his boards again. Could this string of shark encounters prove the “yum yum yellow” theory? I’m no skeptic – three back-to-back incidences is enough convincing I need.
