And watch the full HD movie! Hear the blood-curdling screams!
It’s not every day a man gets nicked by a member of the Great White family, in this case the broadnose sevengill, a shark hunted by the Chinese for its excellent liver oil, very good for giving a man the hardest of honeymoon dick.
Two days ago, Australian media was breathless, as were we, at a French surfer belting a suspected Great White in the beak and beating a retreat for the shore.
Now, the full story of the event and its aftermath can be revealed.
Graham Blade is a twenty-eight year old plumber from Torquay, the town you live if you wanna surf Bells, Winki and so on. He’s a little sick at the moment, chronic fatigue syndrome, and was filming his pal Matt Sedunary, thirty-five, shredding small Southside, a wave immediately south of Bells.
Blade was sitting on the cliff overlooking the waves with his digital camera, entry level but quality lens, good enough to film his buddy surf, when he heard a shrieking so loud it felt like someone was yelling directly into his ear.
“Literally…screaming,” says Blade. “I didn’t know what was happening. I thought he was having a panic attack or something.”
In the water, Blade’s buddy, Matt, was trying to calm down a surfer from Reunion Island, Dylan Nacass, who said he’d been bitten by a shark.
Blade started filming, the water unseasonably clear, the shark visible.
If you examine the photo, below, you can see Matt, yellow, thinking it’s all a fabulous time, while Narcass is in what he believes, perhaps incorrectly given is a life-or-death scenario.
It wasn’t until the pair had paddled twenty metres in that Blade realised the shark was at their feet.
“I yelled, ‘It’s still behind ya! Paddle in!’”
In the carpark, Nacass’ hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t type his phone number into Blade’s phone.
“He eventually came good and said he was going to get some beers, that he was happy for his life, that he was going to go and relax.”
Blade says it wasn’t until his buddy Matt saw the footage, and saw how close the shark was the whole time, that it was actually just behind his feet, that he got shaken up.
“He was watching the footage and said he didn’t realise it was there, that it was so close the whole time. That spooked him out the most. That there was no warning. And even when it bit the dude on the knee not one bit of water moved around him. That kept playing on his mind.”
Back at their Torquay palace, Blade and Sedunary were hunted by reporters with their news crews, who made the pair play Supercross on their Xbox for some B-roll footage.
Blade wasn’t sure if he should, or could, ask for money for his footage so out it went, for free.
Later that night, when the pals, who share a house, spoke about it, Blade said, “Mate, it’s pretty full-on to be in the water when someone actually got bitten. Whether the bite was massive or tiny, it’s wild.”
And all though the course of the afternoon and night, Blade was getting texts from Nacass.
“He was saying he couldn’t sleep and he was stressing out. I told him, yeah, well, you did just get bitten by a shark. It does make sense.”
Watch the HD footage and hear the blood-curdling screams below!