This is the moment a great white shark unintentionally (I presume) recreated the iconic pose from the famous poster of the film Jaws.
Rocketing from the depths with her teeth on show, this 17-foot female great white looks every inch the doppelganger of the killer fish from the Spielberg classic.
Rocketing from the depths with her teeth on show, this 17-foot female great white looks every inch the doppelganger of the killer fish from the Spielberg classic.
The 1975 movie poster, created by Roger Kastel, featured the huge shark racing up from the deep towards an unsuspecting female swimmer.Luckily there were no bathers in the water when this photograph was taken near Guadalupe Island off the west coast of Mexico just over 40 years later.Shark photographer and filmmaker Euan Rannachan, 32, was in a cage just feet from the huge predator when he caught this perfect picture. British-born Euan, who also teaches underwater photography, said it was a shot he'd never quite been able to get before. He said: "The shark in the Jaws image is a female, her name is Squirrel, and we'd been with her for a while."We have these people on the boat called shark wranglers and they throw these two-foot chunks of tuna and get the shark close to the surface."We probably have the best shark wrangler in the world, a guy named Crazy Luis, and he stays up on the boat [and] brings the shark to us when we sit on the surface in the shark cage."Sometimes when the Wranglers play with the sharks, the sharks get pissed off and dive down under the boat and the bait so they can come rocketing up and get it."That's exactly what Squirrel was doing here, she was fed up probably messing around on the surface and dived back down under the boat. It was really deep there but the water clarity was amazing, and I just happened to be in the right spot seeing her coming up."I got myself in front of the cage. I think actually she missed the bait, but she got it a little while later."It's one of those shots, I've had close to it, but as soon as I took it, I came out of the water and showed my buddy who had been after that shot for years and he wasn't too thrilled."Usually, a shot like this is just slightly off even with my camera shooting seven frames a second, but this picture was perfect.
Married dad-of-one Euan was originally born in Putney, London, but moved to California for college and now lives in the US. He said: "Sharks have been a passion of mine for about nine years now, I'm just obsessed with them. I started shark cage diving maybe five or six years ago, and I started teaching underwater photography on the boats."I go a couple of times a year, it's a really special place about 300 miles off the west coast of Mexico, called Guadalupe Island. We have a lot of researchers come out with us and it was a particularly 'sharky' year last year because of the warmer water."