Shark Photobomb: Nurse Shark Records Rare Great White Encounter

Marine biologists studying local sharks were stunned when a nurse shark's camera recorded a great ... More white photobombing their research.
Marine researchers often hope for surprises when tagging animals with cameras, but no one expected… well, this. Off the coast of Boynton Beach, Florida, a nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) unknowingly became the cinematographer for a rare appearance by a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) — possibly the first time one has ever been documented on video in South Florida waters from another shark’s perspective. It’s an underwater photobomb that has thrilled scientists and opened the door to new questions about where great whites travel and why.
Dr. Stephen Kajiura, a professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, has been tracking and studying sharks in Palm Beach County for years. His team’s work has focused on blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus), lemon sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) and hammerheads, especially during their seasonal migrations. They’ve built a detailed understanding of where and when these species travel along the Florida coast.
But this latest footage was a curveball no one saw coming.
The research team had equipped a nurse shark with a bright orange camera tag, a piece of technology that is routinely attached to the dorsal fin, left to record the animal’s natural behavior, then pop off at a set time to be collected. This one logged both video and motion data, kind of like a FitBit, but for fish. It’s not new tech for Kajiura’s team. What was new was what they saw when they reviewed the video: a ten-foot-long (3 meters) great white shark swimming casually into view and interacting with the tagged nurse shark near Donny Boy Slipe Reef, an artificial reef structure made of over 800 tons of limestone boulders.
“While divers have reported seeing great whites here recently, this rare footage gives us a shark’s-eye view of the interactions between these two very different kinds of sharks,” said Kajiura. The clip shows the two sharks swimming together for about four minutes. The team jokingly dubbed it a “shark photobomb,” but it’s more than just a funny moment — it’s a unique record of a rarely seen predator in an unexpected place.
The excitement of the footage was nearly overshadowed by the panic of possibly losing it. When the tag failed to ping its location after detaching, Kajiura feared it was lost to the sea. “At that point, the chances of getting the tag back were slim,” he said. But four days later, luck stepped in. A signal came through, revealing the tag had floated ashore at Gulfstream Golf Club in Delray Beach. Kajiura found it nestled in a pile of seaweed, mere inches away from the tire tracks of a large beach tractor. “We were incredibly lucky it didn’t get run over and crushed!”