David Slavich was fishing from his kayak off Half Moon Bay when a great white shark longer than his boat swam directly alongside him before passing by without ever touching him. He was not injured, and the shark did not attack — but the moment left him badly shaken and reconsidering how he fishes alone.
Slavich had already been warned. A paddleboarder in the area told him a great white shark had been spotted nearby, according to KRON4. He doubted he would actually run into the animal. Then he heard a sound in the water, and what he saw stopped him cold. “I see this massive, massive silhouette and the distinctive fin. This is not a killer whale, this is not a dolphin, this is a great white,” he said, per the same report.
As the shark closed in, Slavich scrambled to get his gear out of the water. “I got to get my rig off the water; I don't want this thing pulling on my line,” he said, according to KRON4's account. Moments later, the shark drew directly alongside his kayak before swimming past — uninjured, with no attack, the station reported.
A Shark Bigger Than the Boat
Slavich later described just how large the animal appeared next to his own vessel. “My kayak's 12 and a half feet. This thing dwarfed it,” he told NBC Bay Area. A camera mounted to his kayak captured the entire encounter, the outlet reported, and Slavich said he braced for impact, uncertain what would happen next, according to KTLA.
Remarkably, once the shark had moved on, Slavich didn't head for shore. He stayed out on the water and kept fishing for another three to four hours, NBC Bay Area reported. He later said he believed the encounter showed that great white sharks are curious animals, not creatures interested in eating people, per KTLA. His wife, Andrea Slavich, saw it differently — she told him he needed new gear before going back out, and said he shouldn't return to the water without getting an actual boat, according to KTLA.
Part of a Bigger Pattern Along the Coast
Slavich's encounter arrives amid a documented rise in juvenile and young white sharks gathering near the California coast this year. Tag data and subsurface sensors have verified that more of these sharks are congregating nearshore in 2026, according to a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, which attributes the increase probably to warmer sea-surface temperatures tied to climate change. Southern California's nearshore waters function as a globally significant nursery for juvenile great whites, the paper notes.
A separate Los Angeles Times report found that the Shark Lab observed juveniles arriving from Baja as early as February this year, months ahead of their typical late-April or early-May arrival. Researchers at two Southern California shark-congregation sites found that humans and sharks were swimming together 97% of the time, that same report found — a statistic researchers frame as evidence that close proximity rarely translates into danger. A 2021 population study estimated roughly 300 great white sharks live along California's Central Coast, according to KRON4.
Other Close Calls on California Waters
Slavich's experience is not the only recent brush between a kayaker and a shark off the state's coast. A day later, on Monday, a kayak fisherman near a San Luis Obispo County beach was reportedly knocked into the water after something struck his kayak, according to SLO Tribune. The impact punctured the kayak and caused it to take on water, forcing the fisherman to swim to shore; he was not injured, the paper reported.
In 2024, kayak fishermen Ian Walters and John-Patrick Thomas had their own encounter with a great white nearly a mile off Half Moon Bay, with their 13-foot kayaks dwarfed by a shark that was even longer, KRON4 reported. Walters described that encounter as nonaggressive and surreal. State records cited by the Los Angeles Times show three surfers and one kayaker were bitten in California waters in 2026, with none of the incidents fatal. Since 1950, California has recorded 235 total shark incidents, including 97 with no injury, 121 nonlethal injuries and 17 fatalities, per the same report.
