VENICE, Fla. (WSVN) — A Venice charter captain and his wife got the surprise of a lifetime while filming dolphins when a great white shark surfaced right by their boat.
The pair were spending the day on the water with the kids and followed alongside a pod of dolphins they had spotted about 20 minutes off the shore of Venice Beach.
“We thought it would be nice to take them out,” said boat captain Brad Clark.
While telling the kids about the dolphins, Yvette Clark, the captain’s wife, made the surprising find, Wednesday.
“I was just filming and seeing all the dolphins, trying to explain to the kids that were on the boat what these dolphins will do,” said Yvette.
Just moments later, Yvette spotted the marine predator near the pod of dolphins on Wednesday.
“Oh, my gosh, look at that great white,” she is heard saying in the video.
The couple later spoke about the rare sighting.
“And it was just a split second that the white came out from the side and just kind of bumped into the side of the boat,” said Brad.
As quickly as the great white appeared, it vanished into the depths.
“I knew that there were a couple that had been pinged off of the coast, but running into a great white like that, and on the surface, and able to see it like that was just crazy,” Yvette said.
Doctor Bob Hueter has spent decades studying sharks with Marine Laboratory and as a senior advisor for Ocearch, which tags and tracks sharks.
He said while it’s not common to see a great white come that close to shore, it’s not unheard of.
“This is a legitimate sighting. This is, I’m very confident,” said Hueter. “Having one 27 miles offshore here is a little bit unusual, but it’s not unprecedented. They rarely, rarely ever come in close to the beach, so no worries to swimmers.”
According to Ocearch, there’s about a dozen sharks currently swimming along the Gulf.
“As the water temperatures drop, they move south and more than half, more than 60% of them in our studies come into the Gulf and spend time off the coast of Florida and even up off the coast of Louisiana in the northern Gulf, primarily well offshore,” said Hueter.
As for the Clarks, they have quite the tale to tell.
“I mean, that’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to happen,” said Ryan.
The Clarks also said after initially spotting the shark, they circled the area to check if it was injured but never saw it resurface.
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