Great White Shark In Photo Among San Diego Surfers Raises Questions (VIDEO)

Just keep swimming.

That's what dozens of surfers in Encinitas, Calif., unknowingly did as a Great White Shark reportedly swam among them.

A viewer sent San Diego's CBS 8 a photo of what appears to be a shark caught in a wave. He told the station he had been photographing the landscape at Swamis Beach and didn't realize what he had captured until he reviewed his pictures at home. (Scroll down to watch the interview.)

However, the photo one anchor calls "jaw-dropping" is raising a some questions from skeptics who say the "shark" could very well just be a surfer paddling through a wave, or the work of Photoshop.

"When [surfers] duck dive, they lift their leg up, and it looks very much like that," lifeguard Sgt. Robert Verla told CBS 8.

The news station sent the photo to a local shark research committee that believes the object in question is indeed 10-to-12-foot Great White.

If accurate, the sighting adds to a series of recent shark reports along San Diego's popular coastline. On Wednesday, a Great White was reported near La Jolla's Children's Pool, causing lifeguards to close a two-mile stretch of beaches, NBC San Diego reports. Sightings were also reported on Aug. 25 and Aug. 26.

Great White sightings aren't uncommon in the area, though. Some adolescent sharks, between 7 and 10 feet, can be spotted in Southern California from May and into the later summer, according to the Los Angeles Times.

A possible explanation for the August sightings? Waters didn't warm up until later in the season, marine biology professor Chris Lowe told the Times.

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Comments

[TeacherNick]

03:29 AM on 10/13/2011

Raging at people that don't know what a DORSAL fin is....

[Jay Goldammer]

05:03 PM on 09/28/2011

Look at the tail. The upper and lower part look about the same lengths. I believe sharks are not. How about a sail fish?

[Loren Nancarrow]

06:44 PM on 09/29/2011

Good point. A dead marlin washed up, near Swamis (where photo was taken), a couple days later.

[Jay Goldammer]

09:03 PM on 10/01/2011

Thanks Loren, good to know.

[Jeff Tenenbaum]

01:53 PM on 09/09/2011

A dorsal fin is always located on the back of whatever fish or mammal bears it. What's in the photo is clearly a tail.

[bgraceg]

05:54 PM on 09/07/2011

I live near this area, and no one believed me six weeks when I told them I thought I saw a shark 's fin in the water as I walked along 101 which parallels this area. The reason not a dolphin, they leap and are always with others, this was all alone, its fin stayed out of the water steadily for awhile, at least several seconds.

[newworldman777]

09:19 AM on 09/06/2011

I have heard several people describe this pic as showing a shark's "dorsal fin," (including the photographer himself, and a news anchor). However, clearly (to me, anyway), the pic shows the tail fin of a shark as it is swimming away, through the wave and toward the sea.

[Karen Schmitt Hall]

10:36 PM on 09/16/2011

Yep...a dorsal fin is on the shark's back. If that is a shark...it is a caudal fin. (aka tail)

[3daywkend]

11:27 PM on 09/05/2011

Is it too big to be a sideways dolphin?

[Jeff Tenenbaum]

01:43 PM on 09/09/2011

Dolphins travel in groups, it's rare to see one alone, like it is with wolves. It happens, but not often. The curve of the tail isn't the same as it would be for a dolphin either.

[Gregory Howell]

07:56 PM on 09/05/2011

I agree about being skeptical about things, but why not believe that a tail fin that looks like a great white is indeed a great white? (I'm a big nerd and I cut out a picture of a great white's tail fin from that angle and laid it over that image and it fits pretty perfectly except that we can't see the little triangle edge at the top of the fin that the great whites usually have.) We all know that sharks are swimming with people all the time. The Coast Guard guys here in NC comment about all the sharks they see from the air just out from where people are swimming and every once in a while someone gets bit. Back when I lived in Manhattan Beach, CA, I thought it was strange that someone was chumming for sharks off the end of the pier while everyone else was in the surf. I wonder how often that happens.

[Sherzie]

05:56 PM on 09/05/2011

This story and photo were posted on 9/2/11. On 8/31/2011 at 5:30 p.m., a young man who had stopped by to drop off some documents to me, told me he had seen a shark, the dorsal fin, as it swam by him the weekend before when he was surfing at Swamis.

So, I believe that the photo is real.

[KidSwiggy]

03:09 PM on 09/05/2011

That pic is....bogus!!

And remember, it's about a thousand times more likely that you'll die in a crash on your way to the beach than of being killed by a shark.

Of course, being killed by a shark is about a thousand times more hellacious a way to die than a car crash so I guess it evens out. Just forget I mentioned it.

[abusedbypenguins]

07:11 PM on 09/05/2011

Struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark. Score: lightning 1; humans and fish 0.

[hadaboge-san]

02:39 PM on 09/05/2011

This thing looks like the tail of a Marlin

[3daywkend]

06:44 PM on 09/05/2011

No Marlin in those waters, at least not that close to shore. Great Whites are seen all the time up the coast a few miles at San Onefre, so I think this pic is real.

[HdTinkler]

01:43 PM on 09/05/2011

Its always funny to watch how stupid people can be.............then they wonder why disasters happen they way they do. Stupid is as stupid does !

[kwaut lizard]

01:10 PM on 09/05/2011

They're everywhere Chief!

www.perthnow.com.au/news/special-features/map-of-shark-movements-on-australia-day-prove-animals-share-the-busy-waterway/story-e6frg19l-1226121729107

[SailNut]

11:35 AM on 09/05/2011

DUCK DIVE............

[ignacio sanabria]

11:16 AM on 09/05/2011

This shark is an spy from a foreign country trying to get into the Miramar military compound.

[josie klapper]

09:49 AM on 09/05/2011

Last I checked my under grad degree was Marine Bio, and I happened to have Dr.Jenie Clark on my Grad Committee ("The Shark Lady", Founder of Mote Marine Lab)... And that just doesn't look like a tail. I just can't picture any angle that make that would make a tail of a Great White, nor any type of shark, look like that dimensionally... And other than to eliminate a Thresher there is no way to guess at species from a picture where it doesn't even look tike a tail...

[ckava3]

11:47 AM on 09/05/2011

Although I'm no expert like yourself, I agree. it doesn't look like a tail to me. . .However, Great White's have been photographed among surfer's before this pic surfaced. I recall 1 pic, I believe in Aus., where 2 Great White's were photographed or filmed in the wave with a surfer. My point is, it does happen.

[josie klapper]

03:11 PM on 09/05/2011

Not doubting that it happens, lived near Aldo Verde too long to doubt that, just stating that it does not appear to be the tail of any shark I can think of off hand. Too narrow over all. Remember sharks do not have true bone, only "soft" cartilage, so there are some structural issues that this picture doesn't seem to meet.

[hadaboge-san]

02:37 PM on 09/05/2011

It looks like the tail of a Marlin to me.

[josie klapper]

03:13 PM on 09/05/2011

Possibly, but note that offset between ventral and dorsal sides.

[Sherzie]

05:58 PM on 09/05/2011

There are no Marlin in San Diego waters.