photo: @trenny_m
Seeing a great white shark anywhere on the planet is going to stop your heart for a moment, even if you’re watching it from behind a monitor. They move like nothing else in the ocean and have a presence that’s unmatched. Still, watching a shark swim through the waters of a lake is really going to grab some attention.
Last August, a photographer captured footage of a juvenile great white in Australia’s Lake Conjola. While the shark was awe-inspiring enough for the drone pilot Trent Micallef, it was something he realized while reviewing the footage days later that was most disturbing. Footage clearly shows something white trailing the shark as it moves through the water. He’d assumed in the moment that white tail was a remora fish. But Lake Conjola is a very popular tourist destination for fishermen, and Micallef eventually realized the white flag-looking thing trailing the shark was actually a fishing lure.
“It’s a shame the effect we can have on them. I would love to have encounters like this more often but if things like this keep happening, we won’t get to have them anymore,” he said.
A shark scientist in Australia told Yahoo! this particular juvenile likely found its way into the lake by following the salmon run to Australia’s South Coast and into the lake, pointing out that the migration is a sign of “the ocean working as it should.” Local fishermen had reportedly announced they planned to track the young predator down and catch it, but the shark had found its way out of the lake naturally shortly after Micallef’s footage went viral.