"I tried to lift my hand it fell over. That's when I knew I was probably going to die."

There’s been much colostrum squeezed from the teat of Carlsbad stuntman and former JOB fall-guy Sean “Poopies” McInerney’s shark jump gone wrong over the course of the last week.

In a piece for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, and which may feature in Jackass 4, new Jackasser Poopies appears to get attacked by sharks after a jump attempt. Like most of these sorta stunts, y’figure a lot of noise, not much damage.

Yeah, well, Poopies copped it.

A few days ago on a podcast, Steve-O pantomimed Poopies’ flopping hand and said the tendons and two separate arteries had to be surgically reattached.

“He would be fucking dead if they didn’t dive on him as fast as they did,” he said.

Today, in an interview to run with new footage of the stunt, Poopies breaks down while recounting the moment his shark jump went wrong and he crashed into the shark pen.

“I thought I was going to die. There were ten sharks around me and… (pauses, breathes out)…there’s like ten sharks around me, I’m trying to swim out… (pause)… And I  I couldn’t swim out, dude, I knew I got bit and I thought I was going to be attacked by six more sharks.”

He says it’s the most scared he’s ever been his life and that he was in so much shock he couldn’t see real well although he knew he was in trouble when he tried to lift his hand and it “freaking fell over. That’s when I knew I was probably going to die right now.”

And then safety protocols kicked in.

“I had the best safety I could’ve asked for. When I got bit the safety medic jumped on me. He sacrificed his own life for me.”

Footage is pretty good.

"I'm returning to my roots."

The Australian Olympian or Irukanji Julian Wilson has lit up Instagram with his shock decision to, well, not exactly retire he says, but draw the curtain on his pro surfing career immediately following the Olympics. 

Wilson, who turns thirty-four in November, is currently rated seventeenth on the tour after a pretty ordinary start to the year, two seventeenths, two ninths and a fifths.

It ain’t exactly the world tour year Wilson was hoping for before the window of opportunity closes for the class of 1988, which also includes South African Jordy Smith.  

“I’m returning to my roots,” Wilson told the WSL. “I’ll be found surfing the points at Noosa on my longboard and I will also be found chasing some fun high-performance waves around Australia. I have a few projects coming to life that I’m really excited about and I’m just really looking forward to take a step back for a little while.

Wilson has orbited the tour since 2011, was a rookie of the year, made Gabriel Medina cry when he beat him in Portugal in 2012, he beat Medina in the final of the Pipe Masters in 2014 and three years later beat Medina to win the 2017 Tahiti Pro. 

Whether or not he comes back as nears forty,  if there’ll even be a tour to come back to or if this sparks an exodus of pro’s from a fading tour, will be revealed over the next year or so.

A typhoon brings proper, gorgeous barrels. Pipes throaty enough to give Brazilian Pip Toledo second thought.

Panic hit at five pm on the isle of Capri.

I had just stumbled across a Michelin starred restaurant in Marina Picola, after lunch, and thought, “We must eat there tonight,” so marched right in and made a reservation.

The problem?

Our dinghy was very low on gasoline and it was extremely unlikely that we’d be able to make it back to the yacht back to Marina Picola for dinner and back to the yacht again after. An emergency meeting was called and we all stood in the small sidewalk overlooking a beach club.

Andrew, who makes the finest boardshorts on earth, was tired and voted to nap on the Mediterranean fronting rocks. Nate and Josh, feeling the warm wind of fate, puzzled options. Micah, a longshoreman on his way to law school, was up for anything.

After a few minutes, it was decided we would take a cab to Marina Grande, get gas, cab back, then be set.

The other problem?

We left our jerry can in the dinghy but that issue could certainly be solved later. We hailed a convertible Fiat taxi, winded up the cliff and found a petit gas station with no cans.

After puzzling more, Nate went into a nearby shop, bought water bottles and we drank as much as we could, dumped the rest on deep purple bougainvillea then filled them with that precious gas.

The taxi ride down, in a different Fiat convertible, was marked by quiet head nods of triumph.

La dolce soddisfazione.

A deep sense of all things working out perfectly that International Surfing Association chief Fernando Aguerre may soon feel.

Rumor has it from shaper to the stars Matt Biolos that a typhoon just may be headed Japan’s way ahead of surfing’s grand Olympic debut mere weeks away.

Aguerre, who pushed so hard for surfing inclusion and also pushed hard for surfing to be in the ocean and not a wave tank, was making a serious gamble.

Chiba, the host region, has generally small waves in the summer, extremely small, maybe unsurfable to non-Brazilians but a typhoon?

Oh, a typhoon brings proper, gorgeous barrels. Pipes throaty enough to give Brazilian Pip Toledo second thought.

Certainly an already frustrated Japan will cop much damage, an expensive add-on to an expensive bill, but for Aguerre?

For the future of Olympic surfing?

John John Florence roof dragging on broken knee to gold?

Bellisimo.

"Unlikely to be any miraculous recovery."

The popular Sunshine Coast surfer Joe Hoffman, who was attacked by a ten-foot Great White at Crescent Head on July 5, ain’t one to complain.

In between thirty hours of surgeries, Joe told his ol boy Bill that he was “glad it was me and not one of the young kids out there.”

Surgeons expect Joe, who is twenty-five and whose arm was mauled from the wrist to his bicep, will, at best, only regain a limited use of his right arm, if at all.

“Everything was destroyed,” Bill told the Murdoch press in his only interview. “His body as he knew it won’t return.”

Leg nerves have been transplanted to his arm, a vein taken from a foot, a piece of artery replaced.

“Rehab is going to be lengthy and it’s going to ask a lot of questions of him. He’s got a big challenge in front of him. They’ve borrowed bits from all over his body (to repair his arm),” said Bill, adding his kid isn’t one for killing Whites,

“There is absolutely no shark hate in our family, Joe accepts that surfers enter their environment. We’re always aware of their presence and the risk of injury is slight. He was brought up in the surf 400m from our family home. People who don’t want to surf with sharks should go to a wave pool.”

A GoFundMe page set up to help cover Joe’s cost post-recovery, this being Australia costs ain’t as catastrophic as the US, has so far raised $61,000 with a seventy-k goal. 

Jeffreys Bay. Closed.

A surfer has been bumped off his sled and hit by a Great White shark at Jeffreys Bay, six years and four days after Mick Fanning was almost mauled by a White during the final of the J-Bay Pro in 2015. 

The surfer, who is forty and from Cape Town, was helped from the water by other surfers around seven am.

He’s in a stable condition, wild puncture wounds to leg and body, as y’can see from the photo, and is currently in surgery. 

“What you may be looking at is a very lucky lad a few hours back at JBay’s ‘Point’ having survived a mauling,” Derek Hynd, surfing’s greatest influencer and J-Bay habitué, wrote on Facebook. “I don’t have his name at this stage or details of the encounter but the poor chap apparently suffered three nips. Another timely reminder to never take any surf, good bad or indifferent at many a Southern Hemisphere location for granted… deepest hopes for a full recover and many a memorable wave soon enough.”

Witnesses said the shark bumped the surfer then came back for the hit. 

Ironically, July 14 is shark awareness day. 

“Right. I am officially aware today,” wrote Hynd.