The spinner shark spent a bit of time with the swimmers in a moment none of them will ever forget. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
If you spend any time at all in the ocean, in the warmer waters of the world, you likely have been sharing the water with a shark. Most people know this in some deep recess of their brain, but it’s better not to think about. Sharks, though, have a bad rap — which is understandable, considering the consequences of a (rare) shark attack and the public perception of them thanks to films like Jaws. But for the most part sharks aren’t soulless, black-eyed monsters hell bent on feasting on human flesh. Recently, a group of swimmers off Bondi Beach got a pretty amazing up-close-and-personal look at a curious spinner shark.
Sarah Hatherly, one of the swimmers, thought at first it was a gray nurse shark, which are, for all intents and purposes, harmless to humans. On closer inspection, she realized it was a spinner shark. Those too don’t pose much of a threat to us, and the swimmers definitely knew that. The shark spent some time checking them out as they checked it out.
“It was very relaxed,” Hatherly told reporters. “It was very close. If it had been targeting humans, we’d know about it.”
