“I had to punch it until he let go.”
Earlier today, a Swiss surfer was hit by what he thinks was a ten-foot Great White at Cathedral Rocks in Victoria, and not a hell of a long way from Bells and Winki and so on.
The surfer, Marcel Brundler, told the Melbourne radio station 3AW that the shark had “sandwiched” him and his board in its jaw.
“At some stage, it had me in its jaw, I was shouting and punching it while it attacked me.”
And as reported by the national broadcaster, the ABC.
Marcel Brundler said he initially thought the shark was a dolphin.
“But then I realised fairly quick because it was more than half a metre wide, with a massive dorsal fin, and it looked at me,” he said.
“Then it kind of dived off, came back and circled me, and took a fair notch out of my board, circled me again, then it got me on my wettie, it got me on my hip.
“Luckily, it’s just a little scrape on my skin.”
The regular surfer was wearing a thick wetsuit to guard against Victoria’s chilly waters.“When he got me he kind of dragged me on a little bit. Luckily I was wearing a really, really thick rubber wetsuit, which probably saved me from bigger injuries,” Mr Brundler said.
“Then I’ve just given him a punch and luckily a set wave came around and I’ve just taken off on the set wave and ridden it to the rocks to safety.”
He estimated the encounter lasted for at least a minute.
“A really, really unpleasant morning.”
Mr Brundler said he tried to keep quiet, and keep his pulse down, while fending the shark off with his board.
Earlier this year, it was reported that there had been a “massive surge” in shark sightings in the area.
Here’s a shark swimming off the Lorne Pier.
Around the same time, a bronze whaler, weighing almost a quarter of a ton, was snatched off the end of Lorne Pier by a keen angler.
