Petting A Shark

Status: Real Pictures (but probably a fake caption)
Nettie forwarded me these pictures that are circulating around in Australia accompanied by this text:

A riding buddy of mine's father has some crazy fishing friends! These were taken down at Windy Harbour - off the South Coast of WA [Western Australia] near Northcliffe. See how close they are to shore!!
image image image image

image Nettie writes "I'd assume they were real enough as we do get some pretty big sharks around here although you'd have to be a complete moron to do what these guys are doing." True, but I'm guessing that the caption is wrong... that the guy in the picture isn't just some "crazy fishing friend." If you look closely at his shirt, you can see that it has a corporate logo on it that includes the word 'Shark' (the only legible word). So I'd assume the guy is a professional and knows what he's doing. Though I'm not sure what exactly it is that he's doing (or where he's doing it).

Animals Photos

Posted on Mon Apr 24, 2006


Comments

I'm not that familiar with the south coast of WA but Christian was saying he thought it looked more like South Africa maybe? He doubts they were taken around here, although he has seen sharks as big in the area.
Posted by Nettie  on  Mon Apr 24, 2006  at  10:13 AM
By coincidence I saw the footage today on the Travel Channel (program called Globe Trekker).
And I must say, it looks more inmpressive on foto.
On video they are feeding the sharks and when they jump up to the bait he pats him in the nose.
However the next scenes were truly impressive when the guy went overbord and swam in open sea with the beast.
They do tours, go some miles out to sea and have some fun with the sharks.
Posted by Unfairly Balanced  on  Mon Apr 24, 2006  at  12:58 PM
Did they happen to mention exactly where they were Beasjt?
Posted by Nettie  on  Mon Apr 24, 2006  at  01:01 PM
There is a South African guy called Mike Rutzen who does this - you can find photos on his website:

http://www.sharkdivingunlimited.com/
Posted by Chris Quinn  on  Tue Apr 25, 2006  at  12:42 AM
I think it was South Africa, but don
Posted by Unfairly Balanced  on  Tue Apr 25, 2006  at  02:46 AM
I've seen on tv (some BBC production I think) a diver taming a shark in the seawater. It was as docile as a dolphin and quite impressive. They commented the shark show the same friendliness to the small fish offering him skin cleaning service.
Posted by t.kurione  on  Tue Apr 25, 2006  at  03:20 AM
"But the guys never said anything about what shark it was, just called them maneatering... and they were big."
-- posted by Beasjt on Apr. 25th

I do believe that the shark is a great white shark. As for the coastline, it does look very much like parts of South Africa, what with the vegetation and the shape of the mountains and the way the ground is sort of layered. Of course, it could end up being somewhere else altogether. I'm not really familiar with the western Australian coast.
Posted by Accipiter  on  Tue Apr 25, 2006  at  03:39 AM
Yeah, that defintely looks like a great white to me.
Posted by Nettie  on  Tue Apr 25, 2006  at  04:39 AM
:sick:
Posted by Anguirus  on  Thu Jun 15, 2006  at  01:22 PM
These pictures are going around the U.S. now with a silly story about a shark that fell in love with a fisherman after the fisherman freed the shark from a net and saved its life. The shark now follows the fisherman around and rolls over on her belly for the fisherman to rub it, ha ha!

That shirt logo says "Sea World" I believe.
Posted by Bob  on  Sat Jan 26, 2008  at  04:24 PM
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/shark-love-hoax.shtml demonstrates that this is an out and out fraud. But South Africa is right!
Posted by Ben Linus  on  Thu Mar 20, 2008  at  01:30 PM
Ok you have to be serious. sharks aren't merciless, bloodthirsty monsters you humans make them out to be. they actually are smart enough to spit out humans after they taste the blood. only 100 people are attacked a year AROUND THE WORLD!!! you humans are idiots
Posted by Jay keen  on  Mon May 30, 2011  at  09:22 AM
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