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Zach Berman is 14. He likes to take drone footage, but he’s not used to seeing apex predators come into his frame, especially while filming surfers. That, however, is exactly what happened in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa recently as a great white came crazy close to surfers. Once he finally realizes it’s there, you can actually see the man on the wave ski work to shoo the animal away as it checked out the crew. “At first, I was struggling to comprehend what I was seeing,” Berman said. “It began to make its way towards the surfers and I feared for the worst; I really didn’t know what was going to happen.”
None of them knew the shark was drifting below them when Berman started filming, but safety personnel quickly alerted them. The young drone pilot said the men were in utter shock after he showed them the footage and that great whites aren’t uncommon to the area given that there’s a large seal colony nearby.
See more from Carlos Gauna on YouTube and learn how to minimize chances of an adverse shark encounter as well as critical information about shark behavior, shark personalities, shark language, what to do in the unlikely event a shark bites you, and more in 20-plus video lessons in Ocean Ramsey’s Guide to Sharks and Safety.