Passengers aboard the Ocean Explorer sightseeing boat out of Newport Landing were hoping to see whales when they shoved off at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, but the captain steered them into a sight even more rare: a baby great white shark less than a mile off Newport Beach.
Cue the theme music, maestro John Williams . . .
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“I almost damn-near ran the thing over,” Capt. Larry Hartman tells Pete Thomas Outdoors.
He handed the helm over to Capt. Kyle Brown so Hartman
could videotape the following footage shot a mile to the south and three-quarters of a mile offshore.
Hartman estimated the babe was 5-6 feet long, and he reports another captain spotted a 15-foot-long great white in the same general area the day before.
To give you an idea how rare that is, Hartman says, “I've only seen one other great white in my life.”
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.