A kayaker from San Diego experienced the thrill of a lifetime during a paddling trip off Catalina Island and he’ll return home to S.D. with a scraped up kayak and two huge sharks teeth to prove it.
Danny McDaniel was paddling to Ship Rock with his friend Jon Chambers when the great white shark, estimated to be 19-feet-long based on the tooth size, bit into the back of his kayak. Initially, he thought his buddy must’ve been messing with him because who in their right mind just assumes they’re under attack from a 19-foot shark?!
Then things got real in a hurry.
“My very first thought was that my buddy, who was 25 feet behind me to my left, was messing with me,” McDaniel, 51, told For The Win Outdoors. “But then I looked down and saw this giant snout completely over the kayak, and then I saw its huge body stretching beyond the bow.”
The shark, estimated to measure nearly 20 feet, turned McDaniel’s 9-foot kayak until he was facing a wide-eyed Chambers.
“I remember him saying, ‘Oh crap. Oh crap,’ ” McDaniel recalled. “My primary thought, meanwhile, was to stay on the kayak no matter what.”
I’ve never been under siege from a great white shark estimated between 19 to 20 feet but I imagine that would’ve been an appropriate time to poop your pants and give up. But there was no pants pooping nor surrender because the crazy incident ended as quickly as it started.
After biting into his kayak, ripping the hard plastic boat around, the massive great white shark quickly disappeared into the dark water in search of its next meal.
However, the shark appeared mostly to have been investigating possible prey. McDaniel said it did not shake its head and held onto the kayak only for about four seconds before letting go and vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared.
McDaniel and Chambers waited briefly in eerie silence before paddling back to Emerald Bay, where the rest of the dive group had been hanging out. (via)
Now, imagine you’re sitting at a bar and two dudes walk in talking about how a great white shark bit their kayak, scared the piss out of them, and disappeared into the abyss within seconds. You’d think they were probably full of shit, right? Well, these dudes have the receipts.
The great white shark broke off two massive teeth in the kayak. They found one of the huge teeth laying inside the kayak underneath his seat and another tooth in the cargo hold behind the seat. And now they have some badass souvenirs from this harrowing encounter.
Here’s Danny in the immediate aftermath of this encounter with the massive great white shark, talking to his friend about what went down and showing off the sharks teeth he found leftover in his kayak.
According to For The Win, Ship Rock is a ~2 mile paddle from Two Harbors at Catalina Island and a very popular destination for SCUBA divers.
While this would shake most people to their core, this encounter wasn’t enough to stop these two dudes from diving that night. They did a night dive at Emerald Bay off Catalina Island that very night.
For more on this story, you can click here for additional photos on FTW.