Santa Cruz surfer Sam Skelton, 24, and his friend Ryan Mackey apparently had a little nose to nose with a Great White shark last week while surfing at Platform’s, according to his first person story in the San Jose Mercury News.
While waiting for a set, a dark, large object in the water catches my peripherals. There, within eight feet of me, placed still in the water, the ocean’s most infamous predatory fish — a great white shark. . . The clarity of the water allows me to see its gills, the speckled skin going from dark to light, and its sheer size, which looks about 10-12 feet long. Fear penetrates my bones, heightened from all the shark-week programs and cheesy TV dramatizations that hype the great white as vicious and bloodthirsty. . . . In a frenzy of four-letter words mixed with “shark,” “holy,” and “big,” I paddle parallel to the beach, directly away from the predator, passing Ryan, who does not know yet what all my commotion is about.
The two eventually paddle in yelling shark the entire way, but no one else seems to care. To get the full feeling of giddy relief read the rest of the story. . .
[Link: San Jose Mercury News]
