Usually if someone has an encounter with a great white shark and lives to tell the tale, the only “proof” they might have probably comes in the form of some sort of injury, if anything at all.
Otherwise, they have to trust their harrowing story will be taken at face value and that any skeptics will keep their doubts to themselves.
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But I think it’s safe to say Danny McDaniel has all the proof he needs, and one newly gummy shark can certainly attest to that.
On Saturday, McDaniel and his pal, Jon Chambers, were kayaking near Ship Rock, about two miles east of Catalina.
According to CNN , the pair were taking part in a scuba diving trip, and all was going well until McDaniel, 55, felt something hitting the side of his kayak.
“I thought at first it was Jon messing with me,” he said. “But it was way too much power for Jon and was on the wrong side of the boat.”
McDaniel looked down to see what was causing the ruckus beneath the water and was stunned to find a great white shark a foot away from his kayak.
“I felt like I was being pushed like a toy in the water,” he said, adding that the predator had sunk its teeth into the back of his boat and managed to push the craft until he was facing Chambers.
“The whole upper body of the shark was out of water,” he said. “It was humongous.”
Though terrifying, the encounter only lasted “four or five seconds” before the shark let go of the kayak and swam off.
McDaniel told KGTV he and Chambers kept their paddles out of the water and stayed perfectly still for several moments, just in case the shark decided to return.
He said he was “literally frozen” while sitting there, waiting to see if the predator would come back or not. Eventually, the pair made it to shore and took inventory of McDaniel’s damaged kayak.
That’s when they discovered the great white had left behind a souvenir of the encounter. Two, to be exact.
Stuck inside the puncture wounds in the plastic shell of the kayak were two massive teeth.
Measurements were taken of both the impressive chompers and the jaw print left in the craft, which were then sent to Ben Frable, Marine Vertebrates Collection Manager at California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography to determine the size of the shark.
According to the experts, the predator that chomped McDaniel’s kayak was somewhere between 17-20 feet long.
Despite the harrowing encounter, McDaniel said neither he nor Chambers were deterred from completing their scuba trip. In fact, just a few hours after being turned into a shark’s chew toy, the pair returned to the water for a night dive.
“It’s one for the books,” Chambers said of the experience. “Not something you want to replicate. [McDaniel] had the best shark attack experience without it being a bad story.”
