APTOS - Having spotted a humpback whale just off the Moss Landing harbor mouth, Sunday's four-hour Blue Ocean Whale Watch Tour was off to a good start.
That's when it got incredible - co-owner Kate Cummings saw a great white shark, something she'd never seen in four years touring the Monterey Bay. The sighting left passengers amazed, and capped a long weekend of local shark sightings.
"People were amazed. They were really, really shocked. At first they were really confused because they could just see this dark spot in the water," Cummings explained, with murky waters obscuring the silhouette of the shark before it revealed itself. "That's when everyone - their jaws just dropped."
Cummings, a naturalist, estimated the shark at least 20 feet, ranking it among the largest seen locally. It was spotted off the mouth of the Pajaro River, near a pod of bottlenose dolphins, less than 200 yards from shore and in shallow waters near Zmudowski State Beach.
