Tourists divided after ‘one in a million' great white shark encounter in 'very rare' spot
Local divers say it was a 'one in a million' encounter as it's only the second time they recall a great white has been spotted in the area. The first sighting occurred in 2019.
White sharks are extremely migratory and known to travel long distances, with one recorded making a 20,000km roundtrip from Australia to South Africa in under nine months in the early 2000s.
Marine biologist Lawrence Chlebeck explained the sighting was 'unusual' but 'not unexpected'.
'It's definitely something that can happen, but sighting one in Bali is definitely a once in a lifetime experience,' he told Yahoo News.
'We know white sharks prefer temperate, cooler, more productive waters where they find their primary food sources. But every so often they pop up in these tropical spots, there's even been great white sightings in Hawaii. So they do tend to go on a holiday to some of these tropical islands sometimes.'
Diving instructors from the group that encountered the shark told Yahoo News they'd never seen one before. Fabian Clinton, the Swedish adventurer who filmed the face-off, said it was the 'craziest experience' of his career.
The dive was organised by Scuba Junkie Penida which told Yahoo there has been 'quite a lot of like talk' about the great white sighting. Because they can travel so far, it's believed to have likely left the area for good.
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'There's been a very split reaction from anyone who has read about it. Some people think they were so lucky, it was a once in a lifetime experience. But others simply say they're so glad they weren't on that trip, they would have feared for their lives,' Amelia from the dive company said.
'We were talking about the statistics about this — it's a one in a million type thing. If you think about the number of dive centres that we have on the island, and the number of dive centres in Bali, each doing at least two dives a day, and then times that by 365 days of the year. That's a lot of dives. And this is the first great white we've seen in six years.'
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