One of the visitors even captured the view in his mobile camera.
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Alcatraz Cruises shot the video on Saturday. Captured from the back of a tour boat docked at the island, the video shows the sharks snout breach the water before it becomes fully airborne with what appears to be a seal in its maw.
The view amazed the viewers who watched the entire attack standing at the Alcatraz dock.
This year in particular, possibly due to the El Niño, there has been noticeable uptick of great white sightings in and around Monterey Bay and off San Francisco, but so far nothing like this. The attack is being called the first shark “predation” event in recent history in San Francisco Bay. “The tourists were pretty excited”.
But while it may seem ominous, McGuire says it’s actually a good thing. “By having sharks as predators, it’s maintaining the health of the ocean”, he said. The shark are present in such a large amount because its time of annual mass migration.
“This year we not only saw pups, but we saw dozens of them”, said Sean Van Sommeran, the executive director and founder of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz. He said he is not anxious about shark attack as we humans are not their prey.
“It’s not so much the abundance of sharks”. There is only one documented fatality from a shark in the San Francisco area, when Albert Kogler Jr. died in less than 15 feet of water in 1959 off of Baker Beach, a mile west of the Golden Gate Bridge.
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“Holy moley”, says a woman off camera as the blood spreads in the bay.
