Terror turns to joy etc…
Here’s the wildest bit of vision you’re probs gonna see today – a twelve-foot White swimming through a group of surfers during a clear-water middle of the day sesh fifty feet or so from the beach at Plettenberg Bay in Western Province, South Africa.
The joint, say local authorities, is crawling with Great Whites because of seals and fish coming close to shore but adds it’s a “normal aggregation” this time of year.
I’m still chasing the fourteen-year-old kid who snatched this drone footage to fill in the blanks, why he didn’t swoop down and maybe let his brothers know there was an animal famous for mangling human limbs examining their offerings a little too closely, so we must draw, for the moment, from our own observations.
One, ain’t it crazy how long it takes the group to see the White?
Two, its languid swim through a potential food source and, three, the VAL swinging his arms over like a pendulum who can’t catch a wave to escape.
According to Plettenberg Bay man Michael Herbst, ‘These guys said they had no idea the Great White was there until one of them yelled ‘shark’. They said they came out the water so fast and the beach was cleared by the lifeguards. For these surfers, it was their lucky day and they will never forget what happened out there as it is on film”.
Over the past ten years, twelve people have been killed by sharks in South Africa, five by Whites.
More to come if the kid checks his messages.
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What do sharks know about peace? DERP
guess he just wanted to see how it was all going to play out…. question… do you guys get any money if I click on the various ads that pop up on the site? probably pennies but if it helps I’ll click.
Probs…?!!??
Definitely appears to be focussed on the one guy the way it doubles back and looks for him twice.
Maybe he’d just gone for a piss or had a a dog rub his leg before he paddled out…
the first guy who caught a wave, watch the shark twitch his way ever so slightly, like a dog going for a fake ball throw, but knowing you are fucking with him.. that guy needs to buy a lotto ticket pronto
yeah I saw that twitch, I like your analogy, it reminded me of letting lure sit, and the fish will just watch it, and then suddenly start to retrieve, and the fish will strike even when they held back before…. maybe if they hadnt been so slow, they would have been more interesting to the whitey, who knows. it was for sure sizing them up.
what I dont get is with water that clear, you would have to have some serious lack of situational awareness to NOT notice that thing, that close to you… even accounting for glare, and it looks like there was none. they seem pretty oblivous.
i wondered as well.. was standup canoeing with the little one out in the bay the other day and the clear water below was filled with fish.. i had shades on she didn’t.. she didn’t see half of what i saw.. weird.. but i am not a scientist
Looks to me like it was lining up on the dude in the blue wetsuit only, the goat boater paddled over it’s back and it turned away. Not all attacks are rapid or ambush attacks. I have seen footage of a shark attack on a diver (my mate took it, he has never been released the images) shark gently cruises into the diver’s blindspot and turned side on at the last second, grabbed his leg at the knee. No indication of aggression prior to this. Dude survived but lost his leg.
For how many decades have sharks cruised through lineups unnoticed?
Looks alot like Occy cruising the prison yard when he (allegedly) spent time in jail for bashing groms?
nah, that shark wasn’t bogging every turn.
The only time I can’t surf like I should is when I’m flustered – Occy (March 2000).
Crazy how it’s just hanging out.. as I watched this my mind turned to “how many times has this been me”. Glad no one was chomped on.
Not surprised to see the goat boat charging straight to the front of the queue after just catching a wave.
haven’t seen a goat boat since the 90s….
Perversely, they’re on the way back. Like high-waisted jeans and perms for men.
Perms for men.. I remember that shit! I’d go fund to get the Chaz’r one. We could raise money for a good cause! Throw you in the mix Rae-rae would swoon.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FTpZiby1TC4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>High waisted jean shorts are a bad look for any girl. Looks like you got a mom pouch/FUPA.
Fuck sake not you too, Derek. Through the hourglass drops another grain of sand, hey Nega.
Bringing a collaborative, inclusive and non-combative stance to media.
I feel you’re flying at the earthly altitude of your un-esteemed peers at 9MSN and Yahoo Australia with this one. Betoota Advocate has become a more reliable source of information.
Hunting a Whimn sorta vibe, if y’wondering.
More views if someone gets bit.
I hope the kid’s response is “Val’s need to learn about that feeling in their gut. SHARK!”
Y’really think there’s a shark instinct?
If we climbed out of the water millions of years ago its somewhere deep inside of us!
You never had that feeling and you say to yourself “I need to slow my heart down” or “Maybe I shouldn’t pee right now?” or you get feeling should not sit and paddle with your feet out of the water?
Paranoia, I think.
Maybe! I don’t think about it much every so often get impulse. My best mate had matching shark bands for he and his son for years. Thats paranoia..
What sorta lessons is that man teaching his boy?
I think he was trying to one up the natural selection process.. “slide in on your helmet” same guy..
Just seconds before I got hit I said to my friend “There’s something wrong here”. I definitely had the lurkey vibe.
I guess I was already aware that some playful seal pups that are often in the area and had been there for a few days were not around.
I think we are aquatic apes and that instinct or vibe is real.
You got hit? Do expand.
Your standard surfers nightmare. Sharing perfect head high point break waves with a buddy. White shark grabbed me off the top off my board. Had my had my arm and leg. Took me under. While trying to free myself I came across the eye. Gouged it. It released and I swam to the surface. Got on my board and started padding for the rocks with my good arm. Saw it was folowing in the blood wake. Tried to use the mangled arm. It looked like someone had run a chainsaw down between my index finger and middle finger and up to my elbow. My ulnar was sticking out slightly ajar. Index finger and thumb hanging off looking like a chicken wing. A bloody mess with tendons and blood vessels washing around.
A little surge helped me in and over the shelf to the rocks.
My friend and a bystander got me to the shore. I passed out briefly. He got a tourniquet made from t shirts around my arm and around the top of my leg. I had lost my calf muscle and had deep lacerations running up, across my knee and up the inside of my thigh, tore open my nut sack and back around my ass and hip.
Doctor told me my femoral artery was lying at the bottom of the wound on the inside of my thigh like a garden hose miraculously untouched.
Shitty sesh.
How long to recover? Whats your surf life like now? Dreams?
14 weeks in hospital. In icu 3 times A year of going in 3 times a week. 10% use of left hand and a fused wrist. No feeling on the sole of my foot. A limp. Lotsa missing or damaged tendons. In leg and arm.
I’m In in my mid 50’s and a commercial fisherman, so surf is sporadic. I get it when I can. Try to spend 2 weeks a year in Mexico surfing.
PTSD and nightmares are standard. When possible a little giggle twig smooths that out.
Spent a good portion of my twenties fishing in the western albacore fleet. The boat was owned by Mark Heoppner. We pull into Santaa Barbara have dinner with his friend Allen Hamilton whom got bit in the hand/arm surfing a reef pass in Pohnpei back in the early nineties. He was kicking out with a lot of speed landing prone on the board as he went to paddle the shark got his hand and fore arm. I remember all the thin scars from the teeth as he was pulling his hand back out of its mouth. Mark was one of the first surfers to surf P-Pass. He fished northern hemisphere summers on family boat and spent winters in Micronesia. He got tip of waves there from his surfer dentist in Honolulu whom went there to work on locals teeth each year. Tons of respect to go through that and make your living on the water..
fuckin ‘ell
Unless you’re surfing in south west oz
probably but maybe not every time, of course how many times has it happened and not even a clue.
the hair on your arms stands up and you get really cold.
Happens to me everytime I log onto Stab.
way more people choosing to lay on their boards these days (around byron/ballina) as oppossed to sitting.
Yes.
Totally. Surfing Cape Town at dawn with maybe 2 guys out, there has been many of those ‘deja vu’ / ‘ eerie’ moments. Could just be paranoia or it’s ‘instinct’, but you know something is amiss.
I think I can smell them sometimes. had other people say this also. with the water as clear as it was I dont know how they DIDNT see it sooner, unless they all just have some tunnel vision going on for whatever reason.
days here you can smell the fish schools salmon/mackeral – you smell before you see them
last week few schools with sharks just sitting in middle cruising along