Takeover Week: Surfing the Shark (Keir Clarke)
Welcome to day two of Google Sightseeing Reader Takeover Week! Every day this week, one of you has been chosen to have their very own sight posted here on GSS, while Alex and James take a well deserved holiday. Today’s sight is from Keir Clarke from the Virtual Tourism Blog!
Just off the beach in North Sydney, Australia, two unsuspecting surfers happily ride the waves, blithely unaware that just metres away, and heading straight towards them, is a deadly shark.
At least that is what The Daily Telegraph would have you believe. They are reporting that the shape towards the top right of this Google Map photo, part of the high definition addition from Google’s Austalia Day flyover, is a shark basking in the sunlight.
Unfortunately for The Telegraph, but luckily for the surfers, this is no shark but our old friend the ghost image. Look closely and you’ll see the shark is in fact quite clearly just a ghost of the bottom surfer rotated through 200 degrees.
Not to point out every little mistake, but the pictures do not link to the correct location UNLESS you type in a negative (-) just prior to the 33.7xx in your address. (http://…&ll=-33.7…). I suppose I could have just linked to it here, but I’m was too lazy.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Maybe this has been covered on the site, but check out the writing in the sand: Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Australia 2007!
Lol clearly just a ghost
That’s a really nice find!
A little further down the beach someone has made a Star Fish out of sand
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
@WRA/Aaron: Link fixed, thanks.
@Michael: See here: http://googlesightseeing.com/2007/02/27/australia-day-flyover/
Hi
Even though this is a ghost image these things do happen.
Look here: http://www.paddlenround.com/img/shark-kayak.jpg
Cheers
Louis
I disagree. That is clearly not the bottom surfer rotated. Is it a shark? I don’t know. I do know that it is NOT a ghost image of the surfer though. Details don’t match.
I agree with Patrick. It is not “clearly” a ghost image. I cannot get the details to match. The dark splodge on the lighter area doesn’t match the image of the surfer. It’s the surfer’s arm over the board but the “ghost” looks like a head shape. I don’t know if it is a shark, it maybe- especially if you took the dark shape to be the shadow of a dorsal fin.
Matt
another ‘not a ghost’ - I have never seen a ghost image anything but offset - never rotated and as has been said, the details are wrong. On the other hand, I have seen sharks in situations like this and the surfers definitely would have no idea and probably faced very little danger… it’s just what sharks do.
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/2513/untitledif4.jpg
I don’t see how anyone can think this isn’t a ghost.
Those images do not match up, nor are they the images in the original post.
Matt
@ korg20000bc: If you click through to the main map, you’ll see that Alex’s rotated images do both appear in the original images.
And finally, the ’shark’ is without question a guy on a surfboard. It is not a direct ‘ghost’ (i.e. the ’shark’ doesn’t appear elsewhere in the image at the same time), but I’m almost positive that it’s the same surfer captured at a slightly different time.
I agree with you. It does look like a surfer and not a shark. I had assumed that a “Ghost” needs to be an exact match not a completely different image.
Matthew
I agree. Unless the shark’s dressed and shurfing on an identical yellow board, that’s a ghost.
I can understand if someone were to look quickly they may think it’s some sort of sea life. Though sharks don’t find people yummy, they sure like to try us! But any time spent looking at the image would prove its just a flaw.