INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Giant Great White Shark Spotted Stalking Surfers Off Australian Coast

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 12:12 PST, Sep 22, 2014

A massive shark was filmed swimming near surfers off Australia’s Central Coast as a drone pilot captured harrowing images of the great white.

The photos reveal a giant shark, 50 meters off the shore at Killcare Beach, chasing a school of fish. Disturbingly close to nearby surfers, the great white stalked its prey unbeknownst to beachgoers. As The Daily Mail relates, drone pilot Tom Caska caught the images, while his brother Andrew surfed on a three meter long surfboard near the shark.

Though the shark and its prey are visible in the aerial photographs, Caska and his fellow surfers were unaware of the great white’s presence. Caska paddled over a wave, observing a disturbance, but saw no direct evidence of the shark at the time.

The sighting isn’t the first evidence of sharks along this stretch of coastline, as the Newcastle Herald points out. Just a week earlier, a three meter long great white shark was observed circling a fishing boat on Lake Macquarie. Fishermen Daryl Evans of Floraville and Kerry Thomas of Pelican spotted the great white while they were anchored at The Barge, a spot halfway between Coal Point and Belmont.

“My first thought was ‘We need a bigger boat’,” Mr. Evans said. “‘We had a mesh fish keep hanging overboard that keeps the fish alive until you clean them, so I grabbed that because if the shark got there first we could have capsized.”

“I’ve been fishing for 45 years and that is the first time I’ve seen a great white in the lake,” Evans noted.

According to Caska, it is the time of the year to be wary of sharks.

“Came in after that big school of fish. Must be careful in the water this time of year as the whites migrate south again,” he said.

The sighting comes less than a month after 50-year-old Paul Wilcox was killed by a great white shark, swimming just 15 meters from the shore of Australia’s Byron Bay. The shark mauled his leg, as The Inquisitr previously reported, resulting in his death.

There were no other sightings of great white sharks in the area.

[Image via The Daily Mail]

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