The first time Euan Rannachan jumped in the water with great white sharks he was half-expecting something similar to the movie “Jaws.” He would later launch a shark photography career centred around precisely that goosebump-inducing aesthetic: menacing underbites, ragged razor-toothed grins, and all.
But he recently told The Epoch Times how his initial expectations of savagery were shattered the very first time he laid eyes on sharks—and they laid their round, black eyes on him.
Sure enough, he'd get his “Jaws” moment, though not in the way he expected.
The Hollywoodized great white “killing machine” was the furthest thing from what Rannachan found on his first trip to Guadalupe Island, a Mecca for shark photographers, where great whites converge to feast before mating season.
“It’s a buffet for these white sharks,” Rannachan, 39, said of the island, a giant rock that once was a volcano 150 miles off Mexico’s Pacific coast. “It’s a migration path for elephant seals, California sea lions. We call them ’shark burritos.’”
One of Euan Rannachan's favorite open-mouth great white photos. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
Cage divers mingle with great white sharks off the coast of Guadalupe Island, Mexico. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
A profile of a great white shark reveals rows of razor-sharp teeth and its distinctive round, black eyes. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
A shark lover from youth, he had never dove before yet was looking to “get up close and personal with great whites,” so he made connections with fellow photographers in the industry, who led him here.
“I was just jumping in the deep end pretty much,” he said, adding that his specialty had been hockey photography for the NHL and corporate gigs up until then.
Toting his brand-new underwater camera like a rookie, Rannachan, from Placerville, California, plunged in and waited in the cage alongside more experienced divers while the bait lured in the sharks. Some are incredibly big and have garnered nicknames like Lucy and Paul Walker, both “massive sharks” around 20 feet long.
“My first interaction I didn’t really realize just kind of how powerful it was going to be,” he said. “It’s really—I call it the rewiring of your brain.” Case in point: he later started a company that takes visitors out on shark dives and always observed first-timers having the same life-changing experience. He says he’s seen high-anxiety sufferers all but cured by the encounter.
Rannachan often tries to capture frontal shots of great whites, like this one of Paul Walker, in which he appears to sport a goofy grin. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
A closeup frontal shot of a great white shark. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
“I was expecting to get in the water and the shark would come right up to the cage and start biting it and just be all terrifying and whatnot,” he said. “And it was almost completely the opposite. I mean, the shark was right there, and I could see its eye moving around and looking at me.”
Upon coming to his senses being underwater for the first time, he was “amazed at how peaceful the entire situation was,” he said. They were so “sleek and quiet,” and being so close to them was “surreal.” But in their cool calmness, Rannachan saw their hidden predatory nature: their silent plotting, their patient waiting game, seeking an opportunity to strike the bait. In a way, that’s scarier than “Jaws.” With real sharks, you can’t see coming.
“In Guadalupe, we used to say ’shadows turn into sharks,’” he said. “They knew how far away they could get so they couldn’t see us.”
The great whites sometimes would disappear from one end and mysteriously reappear elsewhere.
They can also sense fear.
He pointed to the small black dots on sharks’ noses, called ampullae of Lorenzini, which are actually pores connected to an electroreceptor system that helps them hunt.
“They can feel your heart beating,” said Rannachan, who started noticing how the “shark was definitely more interested in what’s going on” when divers were “scared and shrinking back in the cage.” However, the bait was what the sharks were after.
After his first dive, Rannachan was hooked. He would return to Guadalupe many times and go on hundreds of dives.
A great white shark is seen successfully seizing the bait. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
A great white shark displays the size of its open jaws as it snatches bait. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
“My first, I'd say, three or four trips were just really wrapping my head around the fact that the animal didn’t initially just want to kill me,” he said. “And then, spending hours and hours in the water photographing them, just seeing the individual sharks’ quirks—or if you want to call it ‘personality’—coming out was absolutely fascinating.”
Personality is something often expressed in Rannachan’s shark photography. That’s by design. His “Jaws”-inspired aesthetic is achieved by zooming-in with compressed lenses more typical in sport photography. He wants to tell a story of both raw power and beauty.
“I don’t think a lot of people do that,” he said. “I think that’s more a product of how the algorithm likes to digest my work, so I use a lot of that just to get people onto the page.”
He says he “sprinkles” in some graceful full body poses for variety, which he loves “just as much as a nice big open mouth shot.”
Movies have crept into his work, too. Sometimes, this is intentional. He likes to photograph frontal shark portraits showing their awesome girth and what looks like a goofy shark grin on their faces, which reporters say looks a lot like a scene from “Finding Nemo.“
One time, he captured the iconic pose from the “Jaws” poster, with the comically named shark Squirrel aiming its nose skyward, darting for the bait. The other divers in the cage badly wanted this shot. Rannachan nailed it.
Great whites bare their razor-sharp teeth as they open wide to snatch bait. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
A shark goes after bait and inadvertently assumes the "Jaws" pose, allowing Rannachan to capture this rare shot. (Courtesy of Euan Rannachan)
“I was in the right spot, and I got myself into the right position to be able to take it as it came up,” he said. “A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, it’s amazing! How did you get the shark to do that?’”
Not everyone was impressed though.
“I used to get a lot of people who go on preaching about the kind of brainwashing that happens because of movies like ‘Jaws’ and all the rest,” he said, referring to the fear factor.
“I like to tell people that I sat in front of these animals as they did this over and over again, literally inches [away],” he said. “Sometimes my camera would bounce off their nose, and I never once was bitten or attacked or even fell threatened.”
Of course, Rannachan always maintains a healthy respect for great whites, keeping himself inside the cage and the sharks safely outside. To free-dive with great whites is “irresponsible,” he says, noting that, unlike other shark species, they eat mammals like seals. “And I personally look like an elephant seal in my wetsuit.”
Michael Wing
Editor and Writer
Michael Wing is a writer and editor based in Calgary, Canada, where he was born and educated in the arts. He writes mainly on culture, human interest, and trending news.
