Scientist sits on whale carcass surrounded by great white sharks (video)

Scientists sits on rotting carcass surrounded by great white sharks

Some people really will do anything for the perfect picture. One scientist even got on top of a rotting whale carcass surrounded by great white sharks - so he could get the ultimate picture of their feeding frenzy.

The footage was actually shot back in 2008 as part of a documentary for the Discovery Channel, but is now going viral again, reports petapixel.com.

The whale carcass washed up on a public beach in South Africa, and was towed back out to sea. Great whites enjoyed a feast of the blubber before the scientist climbed on for some close-up pictures.

During the video, the scientist says: "This is about the dumbest thing I've ever done. Anything for a good picture."

A lot of comments were left under the video on YouTube, including: "I've seen a lot of videos of people doing risky things, but this particular one just gives me the chills. What if the carcass capsized when a big shark thrashed it around? Or if he slipped in while trying to get back into the boat?!!"

A reply to that comment read: " The whale washed up on the shores of South Africa and in the show "Air Jaws", which is where this clip came from, you see them tow the whale out to seal island where the great whites live and hunt. When they drop it they have a whole lot of sharks feeding on it at once, this particular clip was from the morning after they dropped it, so there were far fewer sharks than when they first left the carcass."

Another comment read: "Great white sharks can actually distinguish between what food would be more beneficial for them to eat. Whale carcasses offer more energy and they ignore any animal near them in favour of the carcass.

"There is a documentary of a shark diver who dives without shark cages and he filmed something like this in the water without a cage and there were 21 great white sharks, not one of them bothered to eat him."