Shark Stories
Good post tubeshooter you've calmed my nerves a bit. I am a paranoid schizophrenic so my thoughts arent always true especially since im on diet pills and havent slept in three days.
Ive got shark eyes on all my oz boards , first time i went surfing with them was at cudgen just up from salt where there was a fatal attack months earlier. I was alone and padded out to a empty right hander . Just as I sat up on my board after getting out the back 2 dolphins surfaced about 2 meters from me and my heart skipped a beat . Not sure if they saw the eyes and were coming to check me out or what lol I was very happy when after about 6 waves 2 other guys paddled out . Yesterday sitting wide off greenmount with bait fish and birds diving was a bit uncomfortable.
Groundswell are you on those fuckn Duromine
3 days is no gd mate your gonna bring on an episode - Stop taking those things now would you !
And no mull either !!
Ok udo i will do that.
Hey GS Udo is on the money take care bloke.
Udo, that dead cow link is pretty appropriate for the Mid North Coast now. Have been hundreds of dead cows on the floodplains from the Manning to the Macleay but must be 100s more washed out to sea in the recent floods.
https://www.portnews.com.au/story/7182278/huge-stock-losses-for-sufferin...
i focus and udo i took 4 10mg zyprexas last night had a small meal and slept for 8 hours so alls good.
im still taking the duramine because im dropping weight fast but one at 400 am and thats it untill 6pm when i dump 40mg of olanzapine which mean im hungry enough to eat a small meal.which makes me sleepy enough for 8 hours of sleep.
Back to that shark theory i had i still think if we strip the ocean of fish everywhere sharks will attack humans imo. its sharky around here in Kalbarri but no one has been attacked because theres plenty of fish and sharks seem to avoid people here.
Evo, Happy, and Supa- thanks for response. Any opinion and/or info is welcome and valued. (and yep, Evo, we seppos are most definitely a weird bunch. Stat speaking, i'm prob more at risk in lot with the men than in water with The Man, lol.)
The guy towards the end of this clip has a story now . An old saying is it's the shark you don't see you have to worry about , but not so here. Very lucky bloke.
Cool video, amazing they can be so close and you have no idea.
Wowza.
noticed some of those sharks were tagged ......also they can turn on a dime with speed
The footage shows how curious the sharks are - repeatedly checking out bits of floating rubbish and the surfers. It also shows that they are quite hesitant - making repeated passes and watching rather than steaming in for a bite.
So the sharks are quite inquisitive at the floating rubbish but generally come in for a look and nudge and then go away. So should we all pretend to be some floating rubbish in a shark encounter? ie shark comes in for a look and nudge but when it doesn't move it's not interested however if the object starts splashing an moving does the shark react first (ie attack) and assess later?
I doubt paddling away quickly will force an immediate attack but you may find it sitting in your wake for a while until it makes up it's mind. If the shark hasn't committed to an attack, it's not likely to do so as a reaction to sudden movement and splashing from a static object the shark is casually investigating. The sharks initial response would probably be defensive and retreat before 'circling back' to re investigate. After that ,, faarked if I know , depends on where in the water you are I guess.
TB my understanding is Whites are ambush predators, your paddling (pulsations) tells them what you are doing and allows them to ambush from behind hence legs are usually the target (also due to mouth size).
Any footage generally shows this in integrations.
Best to sit still lower the heart rate etc.
Unfortunately the 1st thing you will know is a white chopping through you leg or torso (depending on mouth size).
Another recent clip from the same bloke shows a few moments a white had plenty of opportunity to nail paddling surfers.
Makes you wonder how many times these fuckers have probably been right next to you without you having a clue.
Bastards!! These videos pole vault into my head at 3 in the morning and don't let me go back to sleep!!! Past scenarios mix into dreams, meld into these clips. Urgh!! (keep them up though. haha). Pricks!
heavy story eh udo...Mr lucky crunt
Yes very heavy and i know the Lucky chap ..
Wow. Good story& written in a good style....So...50-odd shark encounters(!?)& never seen a Great White. OK.... A 20 footer with a 4foot dorsal pops up next to you &you remain calm. Seriously? Wow. Good story
I believed it until he said he's had 50 shark encounters
Encounter / in water sighting probably better word.
50? &why the Anonymity? Smells fishy...but so do I
Nothing too suspect. I was surfing with another bloke a couple of weeks ago and experienced a similar sort of situation. I was watching the boils on the water from a large animal on the surface as I paddled back out. It wasn’t a dolphin and couldn’t really be anything else besides a large shark. I wasn’t too freaked , cause I didn’t feel freaked. That sounds a bit strange until you accept that I put a fair bit of faith into intuition and I didn’t feel threatened in my gut.. When I got back to the takeoff, I sat up on my board and looked out to sea. I heard a sort of groan come from the only other bloke out, who was sitting about 4 metres away and behind me, closer to shore.. I turned to face him and his face was white as a sheet. He said “A shark just had a go at me” and told me how he was subject to a few aborted runs from underneath, from which he felt the pressure wave of the displaced water amd saw the shark come at him. Just then a set wave appeared and we agreed to catch it in. Without having time to paddle out to the set , it reared up and broke on top of us, I caught it , he didn’t and was knocked off his board by the wash just like in the story above. There was another wave behind which he caught in. We warned another bloke who was about to head out and everyone has a bit of a chat on the beach. No big deal.
I reckon this scenario probably plays out more than you’d think. It just doesn’t get heard cause there’s no attack. You’d never know about our incident if it wasn’t for the similar story above being doubted.
This story is nothing near the drama of the story Udo linked to but is more typical of what an encounter may be like.
Recently, I heard the word for the first time in the water "Shark". It was said loudly with this sort of deep conviction that implied it was big and nearby by a guy paddling like a fast running goanna across the water right by me. He was making plenty of splash and I think he was kicking his legs (dinner bell signal!). Before I knew it he was 20 metres further inside and I was left in his wake as the obvious first target. It was a gap between sets with nothing breaking in between.
I had seen nothing and did not stay to look closely but, as the shore was not too far away, in a resigned sort of frame of mind I began to paddle towards shore. With tired arms, I was not super fast. Upon lying down to paddle I realised that my visibility was limited to a small window in front of me. I was totally defenseless and blind to anything coming up behind me. I lifted my legs slightly so that a grab at the back of the board might miss them. That was one of my few options left to lessen risk.
Close to the shore break I turned to face the open ocean and sat for a bit and scanned for the shark but saw nothing. The guy who saw the shark had paused briefly near the shorebreak but then was off again at full speed scrambling to get out of the water as fast as he could. That was enough to convince me it was a serious sighting so I went in too.
Thinking back, the little adventure highlighted:
- an encounter could occur in the most mundane surf where you are daydreaming about whatever.
- how we may not even see the shark or if we did it could be a brief glimpse and so you are most likely dealing with the unknown and unseen rather than George Greenough type encounter of a big shark in clear water over sand.
- your risks might increase because someone else paddles and kicks in a way that excites the shark - (maybe paddle at an angle away from them....).
- options are often limited - stay and try to sight it and stand your ground but risk missing the brief window of escape time where it is hesitating or checking you out or paddle in quickly?
- once lying down and paddling it is pretty much cross your fingers as your visibility is poor and you can't defend from that position.
My main conclusion for the future is that I will add a little bit extra awareness of my escape options as I surf - nearest rocks, where small inside waves might be quickest reached and caught, what sets are approaching etc. Most of this situational awareness is just part of hunting waves and knowing the line up but being more ready to grab a small inside wave at a moments notice could be worth adding into the equation.
If the full circling thing happened the guy in the surfing world story above had a pretty reasonable and instinctive strategy.
By the way, the sighting was a fin 50 metres away coming straight at us. But when paddling in for all I knew it was a 20 footer metres away.
Ray Shirlaw wrote:50? &why the Anonymity? Smells fishy...but so do I
50 - Pretty much 1 a year for every year he's been surfing ?
Ive mentioned before that a very large tiger shark use to hang around out the back of shipwrecks on lembongan, a couple of stories ,this first one I wasn’t there but a good friend and 3 others were surfing 4-5 ft shippies with bomb sets and noticed a large fin cutting the surface about 100mtrs past the break , 3 of them said fuck this and as a bomb set was approaching they caught the first wave that came along and belly boarded to the lagoon. But my mate steve who was paddling back out when seeing the large set paddled around it and was then left sitting alone in the deep channel. Next thing a wall of water went over him as the shark breached next to him and he was frozen in terror looking straight into its orange sized eye . Then another wall of water went over him as it splashed back down. He didn’t see it after that and shaking and rattled made his way in . Another time I had a small seaweed boat with a 15hp on the back that I used to go back and forth from shippies in and while I was surfing alone my mate went for a free dive behind razors. He was down about 20 mtrs and saw this huge tiger just sitting in the current motionless , said it was like a small submarine lol , I looked across from shippies and saw him surface and it was like he was nearly running in his flippers across the top of the water to the boat and I thought fuck , something’s freaked him out . After about 15 minutes he paddled over to me and told me what he’d seen. We surfed for another hour and forgot about it . Had a laugh over beers that night of the cartoon like image of him running on water.
Spotted a large cruising shark once surfing with about half a dozen locals . We all scrambled for the next wave in and things got a little tight with everyone trying to get onto it . One bloke literally held another bloke off {mates by the way} by pulling back on his rail . You should've heard the cursing when he slipped over the back of the crest.
Old mate made it in and laughed off the 'interference' , but not before pointing out the flaw in the rail grabbers character. He wasn't panicking , that could have been forgiven , he was just being a caaarnt. Mates ....
Weird thing about shark attacks in Victoria is that there is so few on surfers despite presence of numerous big Whites. Wouldn’t all the sub adult Whites that are on the nsw north coast in winter doing swim pasts and the odd attack go to Vico in summer?
Was surfing a quiet back beach on the NSWNorth Coast on the weekend, mid morning, small clean waves and clear water. The sort of day that used to be soothing for the soul but now would be considered prime Great White attack time and it’s hard to get that out of your head.
Sean Doherty wrote a good article recently on what the NSW DPI shark budget is for this year, basically a combination of drones and ‘education’. Education would appear to be swim between the flags, while the Smart Drumlines look like they will only be run at Ballina. There have been about three significant attacks a year for the last couple years during the White season on the NSW north coast. Been one so far, so chances are there will be a couple more this season and I can’t see a few drones making much of a difference.
only plausible explanation I've heard was by a bloke named Kent Stannard who is involved with white shark tagging (tag for life).
He proposed a hypothesis that white sharks don;t like turbid water and that inshore Vicco waters tend to me more turbid than NSW (and that clearwater Esperance coastaline).
therefore there was less nearshore interaction potential compared to NSW/WA.
Seems to be the only theory out there and fits the evidence we have.
That pointer filled Northern California water looks like soup doesn’t it?
it does, which seems to immediately dismantle the hypothesis.
Kent, if you are reading, how do you account for that?
Around Margaret River and South Oz beaches are quite turbid too aren't they?
They both have a decent white shark attack history
nah, WA and South Oz both have very clear water most of the time.
particularly that Esperance stretch which has very high attack rates.
It is interesting that Phillip Island, as an example, seems to have few, if any, attacks when the seal colony has been part of the environment for over 60 years of surfing history there.
Maybe where seals are plentiful, the big ones are so tuned in to those as the main prey that they overlook or bypass most other options. The biggest and best steak on the BBQ will mostly do fine thank you. And, one seal a week is enough to fuel a week of cruising about looking at stuff and thinking about the meaning of life. Whereas in north NSW they experiment more post the juvenile stage and have a well established routine of checking out the sandy beaches for fish and stingrays and so check out surfers a lot.
I have heard a few stories of seals being taken in sight of surfers where no one knew either were in the vicinity.
They are there alright but maybe not often in dinner mode with a surfer as the the best item on the menu.
Big cats are are well understood:
BBC story:
"Tigers that come into conflict with people are more likely sub-adults [a tiger that has passed through the juvenile period but not yet attained typical adult characteristics] trying to find new territories, and among old, injured animals that are evicted from their home territories,"
"It is never easy when a tiger loses its fear of people.
“Tigers are normally terrified of humans,” Ullas says. “But when they discover the vulnerability of people, they suddenly lose that fear and realize these big, tailless monkeys are so easy to catch.”
Of course cage diving has no impact on shark behaviour!?
That’s interesting about the turbid water theory.
There must be some areas on the California coastline which have clearer water e.g the current story on Beachgrit where the snorkeling guy was bitten and all that drone footage from Malibu. https://m.
Wonder if it is possible to correlate historical Great White attacks with water clarity. Strange that a White is happy to take a seal in turbid water in Vic but rarely a surfer.
The water here in Sonoma County (NorCal) is pretty soupy as was said. And volatile. Here, soupy choppy water in late afternoon/early evening = dinner time. Not sure of tidal effect, if there is one. But, as with all other things regarding these animals... who really knows. I have played out that scenario in my mind where i am getting a thorough look-see from one of em. I never know what is the better strategy. Paddling for shore/wave asap, or staying still and keeping tabs on it. Both could be your doom, but you'll only know that in hindsight. Guess, i will find out when i have to and not a moment before. Or never have to find out hopefully. But, in these waters, like parts of Oz, it is a decent bet.
Stay safe there wax24. Sounds bloody spooky. Sounds like your instincts are well tuned though. I reckon stick to them mate.
Supa why do you think no one gets chomped when we know there are big tigers cruising around?
@goofy , I have absolutely no idea mate , very different to bulls aren’t they . The only attack on lembongan was mid 80s when captain cricket RIP speared a turtle and as he was being towed down a shark bit his head arm and shoulder of in one bite.
@goofyfoot , here’s some footage of a great white at a spot called crystal bay on nusa penida , before covid Ive seen more than 20 boats with divers usually about 6-10 per boat , people complain that you see more bubbles than fish . Its a popular spot for seeing big mola mola (sun fish )in the right season . Ive seen mola mola when fishing on about 6 different occasions. Plenty of you tube videos on diving around penida, famous also for giant mantas. https://fb.watch/6sNyavRolg/
This guy would have a good shark story. https://www.facebook.com/1404102748/posts/10223512277020760/?d=n
Shark attack at Cresent today.....
Hopefully ok. Serious bite mark in the board
. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-05/man-injured-in-shark-attack-on-mi...
A few interesting stories on shark attacks and near misses on the Shark Shield report so I thought I would start this thread. Don't want to trivialize the subject as people have had their lives taken or changed forever by what can happen. I thought it might serve as an educational purpose by hearing others experiences so we may all learn from them and hopefully avoid it happening to us.
One of them was a mate of mine named Hazey.
He had been surfing at Castles, a notoriously sharky wave in the bay at Cactus.
Several hundred metres offshore the wave breaks before reforming into Inside Castles making a long left with several sections. The wave has been the scene of several attacks and near misses over the years including the local known as "Sharkbait" who had been attacked more than once.
Gerry Lopez is another who came very close to being attacked out there and vowed to never surf Cactus again after his near miss.
Well Hazey was surfing out the back with another bloke named Steve when out of the blue he was launched into the air still on his board by a huge force from below.
A shark had rammed him with a direct hit straight up into the air! In a moment it was gone but soon returned to the stunned Hazey and started biting him and his board. Hazey instinctively put his arms out to protect himself but both his arms ended up in its mouth. As the jaws closed down his arms could have easily been severed, but several teeth on the sharks lower jaw had become dislodged and imbedded in the board leaving his upper arms with massive injuries, but the vital inner arms where major arteries run were not majorly damaged. This probably saved his life.
By this time Steve had reacted and in a rush of adrenalin and pure ballsy courage he threw himself onto the sharks back and started gouging at the sharks eyeballs, eventually feeling one pop and the shark departed.
Steve got the two surfboards together and got himself and Hazey on and started the long paddle to shore.
Then they were both thrown into the air as the shark rammed them a third time before disappearing again. They continued to make their way closer to shore and the shark nudged them again. Steve told me he thought he really must of pissed it off when he popped its eye.
Finally they we're just a metre from shore when the shark made its fifth and final appearance. It beelined towards them and the shore while they stood in waist deep water with their boards. The sharks mouth was just rapidly opening and closing like one of those wind up sets of false teeth. The boys separated and put their hands on either side of it's body and held it on a 90 degree angle to the beach as they made the final steps to the safety of the sand.
Hazey was rushed to Ceduna hospital and then flown to Adelaide for micro surgery on his shredded arms.
Steve ended up receiving a bravery award and they both sold their story to 60 minutes and made $50,000 each out of it!
It was quite a story!