A photographer captures the incredibly moment a great white shark jumped out of the water during a surfing competition.
Jordan Anast rarely waits in line to get into San Onofre beach, always opting to leave if the parking lot is full, but at Saturday’s San Onofre Surfing Club’s competition, he decided to wait.
He’s now saying the reason he felt propelled to was to get an increible shot of a shark breaching.
‘I never have waited before, but for some reason [I] choose to, I guess this shot was why.’
In an amazing shot, Anast captured local surfboard maker Tyler Warren riding the bright blue waves with a long and skinny shark rocketing up behind him.
In a series of photos that almost seem unreal – uneven to the photographer himself – the shark can be seen making a halfmoon shape as it goes back into the water.
Warren reportedly told Anast later that he didn’t even know the shark had popped up behind, let alone was apart of the rare moment.
Photographer Jordan Anast captured an incredible moment a juvenile great white shark breached during San Onofre Surfing Club’s competition on Saturday (pictured: surfer Tyler Warren riding waves in front of the shark)
In an amazing shot, Anast captured local surfboard maker Tyler Warren riding the bright blue waves with a long and skinny shark rocketing up behind him. In a series of photos that almost seem unreal – uneven to the photographer himself – the shark can be seen making a halfmoon shape as it goes back into the water
‘Over the decades I have captured some memorable moments for others, but this is one was for me,’ he wrote on Instagram. ‘These shots will always be a part of San Onofre history and that is pretty cool.’
‘I thought: “That’s a big dolphin,”‘ he told the Orange County Register. ‘It’s a shot I’ll never get again. It just looks like ‘Sharknado,’ it doesn’t look real.’
Anast plans on having the photo framed to gift to Warren, he told the Register.
‘It beats my dolphin shots. It was surreal,’ he told the outlet.
Matt Enright, a surf club member, said beachgoers grew excited at the spotting, but many of the surfers didn’t seem to mind.
‘There’s been plenty of sightings over the years, no one was really that worried,’ he told the Orange County Register.
Enright, himself, saw two juvenile sharks about six feet away from him on a different day and said he saw ‘several people nearby that paddled like crazy for the beach,’ he but opted to stay.
‘I was so excited to see the fins, I’d never seen it before,’ he told the outlet.
San Onofre is a known breeding ground for juvenile great whites and spotting one there has been talked of often.
This isn’t the first time a shark has breached in the area in the past few years.
In 2019, a shark appeared above water during the USA Surf Contest in Lower Trestles, north of San Onofre.
Warren reportedly told Anast later that he didn’t even know the shark had popped up behind, let alone was apart of the rare moment
In 2021, a shark jumped out of the water during the WSL Finals, causing the competition to be put on pause.
Although breaching isn’t super common, Director of the Shark Label at Cal State Long Beach, Chris Lowe, said breaching juvenile white sharks isn’t totally rare.
He said researchers hypothesize that juvenile sharks do it to practice ambushing, to chase prey, and to dislodge external parasites.
‘Many predators exhibit a variety of predator behaviors in the absence of prey to practice,’ he told the Orange County Register. ‘So, it’s possible these breaches are juveniles playing around, practicing ambushing behavior.’