Back in February, Carlos Gauna, also known as The Malibu Artist on YouTube, spotted something interesting when looking for sharks with his drone: a shark that appeared to be missing the tip of its pectoral fin. It’s not incredibly uncommon to see a shark with a battle scar. Most of them, according to Gauna, exhibit them in some form or another. He also dug into a curious phenomena that he’d been noticing for some time now. When a shark swims, they often leave a trail through the water, much like a trail behind an airplane. “The trails are the results of vortex rings generated by the thrust or horizontal movement of the tail,” he explained. “Horizontal locomotion pushes water in a rotation around the shark’s caudal fin, resulting in the vortex trail. It’s basically a vortex of water movement.”
Gauna films sharks so often that he’s come to know them by sight. One in particular he’s named “Smalls”, because it’s quite a bit smaller than most of the others he sees. Smalls, despite being diminutive, seems to be a bit of a goofball — messing with birds on the regular. In the footage above, we see a good example of that.
See more from Carlos Gauna on his YouTube channel and follow him on Instagram.
Editor’s Note: 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 of a shark bite, and more in 20-plus video lessons in Ocean Ramsey’s Guide to Sharks and Safety.
