Shark Stories

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yorkessurfer started the topic in Monday, 29 Oct 2012 at 12:11am

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!

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udo Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 2:23pm

Much more than a Bump
Launched is the term I heard
But that's 3rd hand info...

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burleigh Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 2:33pm
udo wrote:

Much more than a Bump
Launched is the term I heard
But that's 3rd hand info...

Nothing on his insta. must be holding the footage for the highest bidder

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stunet Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 2:35pm
burleigh wrote:
udo wrote:

Much more than a Bump
Launched is the term I heard
But that's 3rd hand info...

Nothing on his insta. must be holding the footage for the highest bidder

Burch has been doing a lot of writing himself. I'm sure he's controlling the narrative, so to speak.

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burleigh Wednesday, 15 Mar 2023 at 2:45pm
stunet wrote:
burleigh wrote:
udo wrote:

Much more than a Bump
Launched is the term I heard
But that's 3rd hand info...

Nothing on his insta. must be holding the footage for the highest bidder

Burch has been doing a lot of writing himself. I'm sure he's controlling the narrative, so to speak.

Sharks sell. Just ask Mick.

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seaslug Thursday, 16 Mar 2023 at 3:18pm

A woman has been knocked off her surf ski by a massive shark off the coast of Albany.

The terrifying incident took place at Cheynes Beach just before 8am on Thursday.

Fisheries officers said that a 5-6m shark took out a chunk out of the surf ski, knocking the woman into the water.

“The incident occurred approximately 100m offshore, in waters near the Cheynes Beach Caravan Park.

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R00ney Thursday, 16 Mar 2023 at 6:04pm
seaslug wrote:

A woman has been knocked off her surf ski by a massive shark off the coast of Albany...

Jebus, that's a big f*cker.

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AlfredWallace Thursday, 16 Mar 2023 at 6:22pm
seaslug wrote:

A woman has been knocked off her surf ski by a massive shark off the coast of Albany.

The terrifying incident took place at Cheynes Beach just before 8am on Thursday.

Fisheries officers said that a 5-6m shark took out a chunk out of the surf ski, knocking the woman into the water.

“The incident occurred approximately 100m offshore, in waters near the Cheynes Beach Caravan Park.

Seaslug. hi. back in the early 80’s surfed Cheyne’s Point a lot. Never felt easy in the water, always looking around or over your shoulder. One outing to there, through a mad rush, accidentally left my board back in Albany. I watched my mates surf and i was the designated spotter. Beautiful landscape that region.AW

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icandig Thursday, 16 Mar 2023 at 8:12pm

Haven't watched this yet, but caught a glimpse today. When I get a chance I might backtrack.

https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2302Q003S00

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-13/valerie-taylor-lifelong-quest-to-...

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soggydog Thursday, 16 Mar 2023 at 8:35pm
AlfredWallace wrote:
seaslug wrote:

A woman has been knocked off her surf ski by a massive shark off the coast of Albany.

The terrifying incident took place at Cheynes Beach just before 8am on Thursday.

Fisheries officers said that a 5-6m shark took out a chunk out of the surf ski, knocking the woman into the water.

“The incident occurred approximately 100m offshore, in waters near the Cheynes Beach Caravan Park.

Seaslug. hi. back in the early 80’s surfed Cheyne’s Point a lot. Never felt easy in the water, always looking around or over your shoulder. One outing to there, through a mad rush, accidentally left my board back in Albany. I watched my mates surf and i was the designated spotter. Beautiful landscape that region.AW

Sounds like it was very close to the point. Deep dark water off the back of the take off.

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southernraw Thursday, 16 Mar 2023 at 8:52pm

Alot of whale carcasses wash up along that coast.
Not too far from Bremer Canyon.
Shit tonne of marine activity.
Glad it wasn't more serious.
Cheynes spooky as fk.
Sadly it has a history.
Cheers for the headsup SS.
https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/albany-shark-warning-whale-carcass-spotte...
https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/decomposing-fin-whale...
The second link shows an aerial photo of the spot it happened today, a few years ago when a whale washed up there. Crazy pic.

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frog Tuesday, 9 May 2023 at 11:44am

ABC story quotes:
"It's getting more and more common now to wind up half sharks — small sharks that are getting eaten by bigger sharks — I never saw that 10 years ago."

"What we found is that the sharks arrived quicker and quicker each day to the point where on the sixth day, they arrived within literally a few minutes — very quickly," Dr Mitchell says.

"We filmed at Swains reef [GBR] on a mother ship about four weeks ago. There were days where you got no fish back. At one point we went through 75 hooks in three days — sharks just taking everything."

Some pretty big changes occurring.

Surf ski motors might start to become a dinner bell?

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basesix Tuesday, 9 May 2023 at 11:53am

ha, frog, good point.. no good for towers.. it has long been said that the cage-diving around here is training big-uns to associate the human-form in a tea-bag with chummed up water

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udo Tuesday, 9 May 2023 at 12:01pm

Jody P - Fitz - whats your thoughts on Shark numbers ?

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frog Tuesday, 9 May 2023 at 12:02pm

Given the trends it is surprising there are not more attacks. Goes to show how hard wired their behaviour is to what they grow up eating and are familiar with and how they hang around certain good food source locations.

If they start taking fish off lines near your local surf spot - time to worry - as it means their numbers, confidence and proximity are tipping the risk scale significantly.

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tubeshooter Tuesday, 9 May 2023 at 5:42pm

The increase in the recreational fishing population in popular areas is also a big contributor to the problem that fishermen are seeing.
With so many boats at certain spots , the volume of fish getting hooked puts a hell of lot of stimuli out there to attract more sharks. And sharks are always up for an easy meal, they've been following trawlers etc since the industry began.

You can still get skunked while fishing with no one around though. The numbers have definitely increased dramatically over the years imo.
Tiger sharks have been the biggest pain in the arse in my commercial fishing experience. I'd hate to put a dollar amount on how much I've been taxed in the way of lost product and damaged gear by the men in grey.

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velocityjohnno Saturday, 13 May 2023 at 1:30pm

Re: the fishing, did 120m off Exmouth back in 2009 and you had 5 minutes at a new spot before your bottom fish was coming up with a tiger shark attached. We were hunted about the sea...

Tragic news from SA if true

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frog Monday, 15 May 2023 at 7:01pm

Tiger Shark attack on kayak. The speed and aggression reminds us who is boss out there if they decide to have a go.

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basesix Monday, 15 May 2023 at 7:21pm

whoa, territorial alpha kamikaze .. sounds like dave hughes in the kayak..

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basesix Tuesday, 16 May 2023 at 2:16pm

a few more details:


('Scott Haraguchi was fishing when the tiger shark rammed into his kayak in the waters off windward Oahu Friday')

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udo Sunday, 4 Jun 2023 at 6:20pm

Goldy Slob - Around 12.50 min
Stabi Craft - 4.42m

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basesix Sunday, 4 Jun 2023 at 7:26pm

great fishing video!

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southernraw Thursday, 8 Jun 2023 at 4:43pm
udo wrote:

https://www.realestate.com.au/news/shark-hunter-vic-hislop-revealed-as-n...?

The size of that thing caught off P.I. Faark!

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tubeshooter Thursday, 8 Jun 2023 at 4:58pm

I wonder if he managed to sell that 5m White he's had on ice for 30 years.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3368592/Queensland-shark-hunter...

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basesix Thursday, 8 Jun 2023 at 6:24pm

tee to green in 1 -
nicely played ws!

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frog Friday, 9 Jun 2023 at 10:44pm

I used to think Hammerheads were sort of placid after all those documentaries showing schools of them looking slow and dopey. But this is the second video I have seen making them look a bit crazy! What do the experienced fishermen think?

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goofyfoot Saturday, 10 Jun 2023 at 6:39am

Horrible video doing the rounds at the moment of a Russian guy getting fatally attacked by a Tiger shark in Egypt.
Can hear him yelling out for help a few times just off shore. Not nice viewing.

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andy-mac Saturday, 10 Jun 2023 at 6:48am
goofyfoot wrote:

Horrible video doing the rounds at the moment of a Russian guy getting fatally attacked by a Tiger shark in Egypt.
Can hear him yelling out for help a few times just off shore. Not nice viewing.

Yep had that forwarded to me and watched it without really knowing what it was. Heavy.
Poor person.

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crg Saturday, 10 Jun 2023 at 11:04am

Saw that vid…almost more eerie in the flat, calm water with the shark just casually taking its time…no violent thrashing.
Must have been disturbing to see live.

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udo Tuesday, 27 Jun 2023 at 12:26pm
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Coaster Thursday, 29 Jun 2023 at 7:56pm

It’s far from a shark attack, but this guy was speared through the nose by a garfish while surfing in Indo.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/perth-fish-in-face-surfer-indonesia/ce...

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flollo Thursday, 29 Jun 2023 at 8:07pm

I recently bought a whole heap of 60s and 70s Nat Geo (which are absolutely mind blowing) and there was an article in a 1974 edition about a Pardachirus fish. They did a lot of experiments with this fish and sharks in Red Sea. This fish species had poison that deterred sharks. Shark would approach it with open mouth but it was unable to bite and it would just run away. This occurred for hours, even water was full of other fish and sharks were on a frenzy. They were dreaming of building some repellant that they could put on a wetsuit so they could swim with sharks fear free.

Does anyone know about this? Did it go anywhere, is there any potential with some repellant like this?

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basesix Thursday, 29 Jun 2023 at 8:16pm

Is that the fish poison that had to be so near to the shark to be effective that it proved to be ineffective for us? I think it fucked with their gills?
(haha, holy shit coaster!)

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flollo Thursday, 29 Jun 2023 at 8:19pm

They didn’t really specify the distance but they seemed to be quite optimistic about it. They believed that some invisible poison got released into empty space which deterred sharks. If true, you could control how much (and at what radius) is released to mitigate the distance risk. It was all experimental in the article so I’m curious if anyone got to the next stage.

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wax24 Friday, 30 Jun 2023 at 4:53pm

I can't link anything from my work computer, but a search on wikipedia comes up with Pardaxin as the toxin used by this fish. And yep, BaseSix, trials seemed to determine that it almost needed to be spayed directly in the sharks mouth, and it dillutes in the water very quickly.
I suppose it'd still keep the thing to just the first bite, and however quickly it dillutes, it'd still give it pause to return. Both small consolations, but i think i would use it if were developed into a commercial item.
Seems like that isn't gonna happen, though.

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Ray Shirlaw Saturday, 1 Jul 2023 at 11:26am

Troughblock Algaecide or dishwasher soapcake

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wax24 Sunday, 2 Jul 2023 at 6:37pm

How'd ya mean, Ray?

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tubeshooter Sunday, 2 Jul 2023 at 7:57pm
wax24 wrote:

How'd ya mean, Ray?

I think he's suggesting commercially available alternatives. The kind of stuff strict, old school parents would make you chew on as punishment for swearing.

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wax24 Sunday, 2 Jul 2023 at 10:58pm

I think he's suggesting commercially available alternatives. The kind of stuff strict, old school parents would make you chew on as punishment for swearing.

Oh. I wouldn't know. I never swore. Or sinned. (lol)

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AndyM Monday, 3 Jul 2023 at 8:02am

Might need some of that around here soon, they’re burying a dead whale in the foredunes up the road.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/102551942

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Ray Shirlaw Wednesday, 5 Jul 2023 at 2:04pm

Hi wax24. Yes, troughblocks which farmers use to keep water for stock clean, are primarily Copper Sulphate,a chemical similar to the one found in rotten shark meat which is known to repel shark feeding behavior. Unfortunately it is highly toxic to most aquatic life &also probably not that good to bathe in ! Many old- shool detergents contain Sodium Lauryl Sulphate,another chemical proven to induce gagging&dry retching if enough of it gets into sharks gills. This is all speculative......happy surfing!

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velocityjohnno Wednesday, 5 Jul 2023 at 2:21pm
AndyM wrote:

Might need some of that around here soon, they’re burying a dead whale in the foredunes up the road.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/102551942

Nothing like burying a dead whale in a foredune to bring people together.

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udo Wednesday, 5 Jul 2023 at 3:18pm

Couple of Hundred litres of Dye in the Hole with it would have been A Good Move
Track that Oil Slick....
Powder / Liquid - https://www.drbeach.org/dr-beach

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frog Friday, 7 Jul 2023 at 10:58pm

Bear experts understand well that a food conditioned bear is a dangerous bear. They hang around civilisation and have lost their shyness and so tend to persistently cause trouble.

But of course shark dive tourism is harmless.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230627-the-alpine-row-over-problem-...

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wax24 Saturday, 8 Jul 2023 at 7:27pm

I'm with ya, Frog.
Seems the marine bio/eco crowd believe that shark diving does two things.... one, it gives sharks a monetary value other than shark finning, so humans might leave them alone, or, at least, alive, and two, it gives a softer view of them than media/hollywood has, again, so that humans might leave them alone, or, at least, alive.
Seems that crowd do not believe there is any direct correlation of shark diving and "negative shark/human interactions."
I think they are so set on saving the sharks (i wanna save em, too), that they turn a willful blind eye to the point you're getting at, but that's just me.
Continued development of shark repellents is the golden ticket?
I do think shark behavior towards humans is shifting. I just hope my SharkEyes actually work.

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Supafreak Sunday, 16 Jul 2023 at 7:08am

This is incredible footage of a great white at JBay a few hours ago .

gets interesting at the 4.20 minutes mark

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andy-mac Sunday, 16 Jul 2023 at 7:41am
Supafreak wrote:

This is incredible footage of a great white at JBay a few hours ago . https://youtu.be/-bcWYPO9Tsw gets interesting at the 4.20 minutes mark

Incredible footage...