The Dorsal Fin

There are actually some fairly impressive kite boarding videos on YouTube. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. According to the title and the video information, the video above purports to show a great white shark attack a kite surfer, when in reality it’s just a garbled mix of surface and underwater shots with a couple of snippets of white shark footage spliced in. Throw in some really bad acting and “blood” in the water, and you’ve got your supposed shark attack video. To the video creator’s credit, the transitions into and out of the white shark footage are fairly smooth.

Microsoft has released a new commercial featuring the rather infamous “Zombie vs Shark” scene from Lucio Fulci’s 1979 film, Zombie (aka Zombi 2), in which a zombie attacks a tiger shark. Despite the fact that the shark in the video is clearly a tiger shark, the Microsoft ad mistakenly refers to the animal as a great white shark.

While the zombie has the upper-hand early on, the tiger shark ends up with the zombie’s upper-hand and upper-arm at the end of the battle. Unlike many other shark attack sequences seen in movies of this era, the shark scene in Fulci’s Zombie was filmed with an actual tiger shark. The zombie was reportedly played by the shark’s trainer. Below is the “Shark vs Zombie” scene in its entirety.

Don’t try this at home kids! In a battle between a fisherman, a tarpon, and a great hammerhead shark, put your money on the great hammerhead. The video was shot under Long Key bridge near Duck Key, Florida. After a 20 minute fight with the tarpon, the fisherman loses his catch to a great hammerhead. Half of the tarpon surfaces not long after the initial attack, and the fishermen decide it would be a good idea to reach over the side of the boat and grab the remaining carcass of the tarpon only to have the hammerhead come up from below and literally take the tarpon out of their hands. The video information lists the hammerhead at about 14′ in length.

As a public service announcement, I’d like to discourage anybody from trying to hand-feed a large predatory wild animal in the manner displayed in this video, unless, of course, you are striving to make the final cut for The Darwin Awards. Fortunately, these guys came home with their hands and fingers still attached.

The owner of the video has also posted this longer version of the fisherman vs. tarpon vs. shark events.

The Dyers Island Conservation Trust has recently released this video documenting the healing progress of a male great white shark in the vicinity of Dyers Island. In late 2008, the shark sustained a relatively large injury along the vetebral column near the front of the primary dorsal fin. The video suggests that the injury was likely caused by a boat propeller.

The video documents the sharks’ healing progression over a 2-month period while the shark remained in the region. When the shark returned to the region in November, 2009, the wound appeared to have healed up amazingly, at least from a visual standpoint, and the shark did not seem to be suffering any permanent effects as a result of the injury.

The Dyers Island Conservation Trust recently posted this short video on parasitic copepods infecting white sharks in South Africa. If you’ve watched enough videos or looked at enough photos of sharks, then you’ve probably noticed some of these parasitic species freeloading off of a host shark. One of the most noticeable on white sharks, as can be seen in this video, is the Pandarus satyrus. While a vast majority of the oceans’ copepods are free-living, it is estimated that about 15% are parasitic in nature. For more information check out this article on parasitic copepods.