One wouldn’t think that a butterfly and a great white shark would be seen together in the same video frame, but that’s what occurred when filmmaker Carlos Gauna was out capturing video for his YouTube channel.
And not only did he capture a butterfly flying over a swimming great white shark once, but he did it twice.
Gauna, based in Southern California and whose works have been used by National Geographic and Discovery Channel, also captured a rare encounter of a seal pestering a shark, which he wrote “has to be seen to be believed.”
The butterfly footage starts around the 59-second mark:
The video footage is posted on his TheMalibuArtist YouTube channel, which specializes in drone footage of marine life.
How did he catch a butterfly and a great white shark in the same video?
Gauna explained to USA Today/For The Win Outdoors, “This time of the year is the time to catch such clips. While tough to get, there’s certain areas with a high number of butterflies and sharks at the same time. Just takes a bit of patience and eventually it happened twice in one day!
“Out of all the hours I’ve had observing sharks, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve witnessed, simply because it shows the beauty and grace of both creatures so close to each other yet existing in different realms simultaneously—below the water and above.”