SHARK!!!

[austeve]

Had a couple of times when they have swum past me & I have been none the wiser , but had others let me know
Definately had those spooky moments when the water is dark or murky no - one else around & fish start jumping nearby ... gets you paranoid.
Other times had something largish breaking the water & splashing out the back about 10 - 20 m away but been amongst the pack so safety in numbers comes into it.
Old bloke swears that when there is a noah around you can smell an ammonia like smell , which is no good to me as nose is rooted from footy injuries & stuff... anyone else heard of that ?

[zingomar]

Happily, I spent most of my surfing life blissfully unaware of how many sharks are out there. I heard few stories and saw nothing. Unless a close mate saw something you never knew. I really assumed they were pretty scarce in most places. I never took the late evening / early morning warnings seriously.

Stories on the net and TV documnetaries have changed all that - there are heaps out there

Plus I've now met a few fishermen who have told me stories of how they often see sharks cruising the surf line on dusk at local spots. The docos showing the change in shark behaviour after dark are also pretty sobering - placid reef sharks turning into packs aggressively hunting every nook and cranny of reefs for sleeping / hiding fish (the same fish they swam past during the day and ignored!).

The good news from all the stories is that they indicate that seeing a shark still places you in the low probability of being attacked or even harrassed by them. They stories are 98% about seeing one - not being chased, nudged or attacked.

Still there are a couple of reefs I am a lot more wary of and the dawn patrol surf on my own is not so enticing these days

[dougirwin13]

Plenty of that here in SA

Felt really spooked at my local last year so I got out.

Chopper came along and chase of a 6m Great White 15 mins later.

Went back out the next morning

Trips up to Eyre always feel freaky too... Good surf tho.

-doug
Compsand.com - The Composite Surfboard Cooperative!

[Hairy_Joseph]

one time i saw a shark. i was surfing like 21ft tezza on me brothers mal when a 42ft whale shark bit me board in half n i tore me sack on one of its tooths.then i punched it so hard in the dick that it choked on its own spew n died n that. then i dragged it in with one arm cuz i was tryin to hold me own dick n balls together since i tore it up. n then me dad came down n gave me a big tonguey n said he was proud that i did everythin he taught me. cuz like we're from the farm n that n we always have to be prepared on how to battle animals what dont know to respect men. like me dad always makes me battle like angry sheep n that cuz like, they not too smart eh n they dont know what to respect us cuz we could just bash their heads in wiv a rock if we want. like one time me dad made me bash all the baby sheeps with rocks cuz he thinked they had AIDS but then they wasnt been havin sex with other sheeps so they couldnt have aids. but they was already dead anyway cuz im like heaps good at bashin wiv rocks n that. like i been practice it since i was like 3. cuz like farmin is pretty sick eh. i like run the farm n that now cuz dad got himself a gumby neck ever since the tractor fell on it cuz me sister was tryin to drive down the side of the dam n me dad was buryin a sheep what carked it cuz it got infected in its arse cuz of dags n shit n the tractor tipped over n landed on me dads neck. n now him n mum cant do roots no more so she sleeps next door on gazzas farm.
but yeah the shark was a piss weak battle eh. specially compare to the one time me dad n his mate steve made me battle a kangaroo we half ran over when we was goin to pick me grandmum up from wagga hospital cuz she broke her legs cuz she fell over in the shower cuz shes too old n that n me brother had to go in n pick her up off the floor n he saw her boobs n that.. me mum was so pissed when we told her what broke me ribs cuz a kangy kicked me right in the tucker box she just cacked it cuz she got into dads fridge in the shed n cleaned up his long necks. dad was pissed too n tried to give a her a whopper kick up the arse cuz what she deserved but cuz his bung neck he accident putttin a boot through grandmums teef n broke her jaw n that.

[Tills]

A yank who lives up on the reef around Pt Douglas, Dr Walter Stark, made his fortune by developing the electronic aqualung and flogging it to the US navy. Anyway, he reckoned that sharks hate sea-snakes so he developed a wetsuit that was banded with white horizontal stripes. He swore that no self respecting shark would go near you....only problem is that you would look like a dick and no self respecting surfer could stop himself from laughing at you...probably better to take the risk than wear the suit!

I remember seeing a surfboard design on the bottom of the board that resembled one of those black and white striped fish that often swam under sharks cleaning them. Apparently sharks would see them as useful and not attack. Doubt they ever tested it out at Seal Island, South Africa.

I think this is the one you might be talking about. Saw this on discovery a while back, and also a small add in the back of Tracks I think it was.

http://www.sharkcamo.com/

It's certainly a much better design than that big sharks head cartoon that some mob was trying to flog a few years ago.

Really though, I'm not convinced about these sort of products. Don't know if the amount of surfers attacked each year really justifies the need for it. Then again, I guess there are some waters where shark populations are pretty high, and it might be worthwhile.

I still think sharks are pretty indiscriminate.

[philw]

hairy joseph just made my morning :lol:

[2nd Reef]

one time i saw a shark. i was surfing like 21ft tezza on me brothers mal when a 42ft whale shark bit me board in half n i tore me sack on one of its tooths.then i punched it so hard in the dick that it choked on its own spew n died n that. then i dragged it in with one arm cuz i was tryin to hold me own dick n balls together since i tore it up. n then me dad came down n gave me a big tonguey blah blah blah the floor n he saw her boobs n that.. me mum was so pissed when we told her what broke me ribs cuz a kangy kicked me right in the tucker box she just cacked it cuz she got into dads fridge in the shed n cleaned up his long necks. dad was pissed too n tried to give a her a whopper kick up the arse cuz what she deserved but cuz his bung neck he accident putttin a boot through grandmums teef n broke her jaw n that.

wat hav you dun wif Stephen?

[BA]

Gave me such a bad time that I had to have sex with their sisters.

[Smolchy]

A yank who lives up on the reef around Pt Douglas, Dr Walter Stark, made his fortune by developing the electronic aqualung and flogging it to the US navy. Anyway, he reckoned that sharks hate sea-snakes so he developed a wetsuit that was banded with white horizontal stripes. He swore that no self respecting shark would go near you....only problem is that you would look like a dick and no self respecting surfer could stop himself from laughing at you...probably better to take the risk than wear the suit!

Tell Dr Stark to get some footage of himself swimming through a pack of hungry great whites wearing the suit and I might consider it.

[Felix]

A yank who lives up on the reef around Pt Douglas, Dr Walter Stark, made his fortune by developing the electronic aqualung and flogging it to the US navy. Anyway, he reckoned that sharks hate sea-snakes so he developed a wetsuit that was banded with white horizontal stripes. He swore that no self respecting shark would go near you....only problem is that you would look like a dick and no self respecting surfer could stop himself from laughing at you...probably better to take the risk than wear the suit!

Tell Dr Stark to get some footage of himself swimming through a pack of hungry great whites wearing the suit and I might consider it.

He tested it somewhere in Fiji where the outgoing tide funnels through a narrow section of the reef and a whole lot of reefies wait for their dinner, apparently it is quite a famous dive location, anyway it supposedly worked.

hahahah...but I agree with you....let him try it where the big fish hang out.

[lambert]

lambert... have you ever done the paddle across to cook island at fingal?
heard it can get good over there, but never went the paddle myself..
the place always looked like a fkn feeding frenzy of fish and hundreds of dive bombing birds..

yeah ive done it but only on a surf ski, a buddy of mine has a house on backbeach and whenever the swell and tide, which are as rare as pie in thailand, then i would check it out but only if the beachies were crappy, the water life out there is insane! if i had a decenet boat i would fish it for sure because there were schoools everywhere, its illegal to land on but ive surfed it once and got freaked and bailed after 30 mins, there is a massive bronze out there i hear, heard a few stories from local rock fishos

[Slowman]

...
Old bloke swears that when there is a noah around you can smell an ammonia like smell , which is no good to me as nose is rooted from footy injuries & stuff... anyone else heard of that ?

Don't know about ammonia but have you ever seen shark shit? It is like some clear jelly, or at least that is what I have been told, anyway it has distinctive ultra fishy smell - perhaps that could be similar to ammonia. Anyway whenever I smell that I stay pretty vigilant and stay near others I know I can outpaddle. You'll never outpaddle the shark, but you don't have to, you just have to beat your mate

[Cliff]

at gnararloo you see a shark just about every day. They are big, but pretty well fed.

[Holy Smoke]

seen plenty of sharks @ OCEANWORLD. not alot of surfing goes on there though

[bombora]

Have had plenty of encounters fishing, and a few surfing. By the by anyone heard of the term "yummy yummy yellow"? Heaps of ocean kayakers etc believe sharks love the colour yellow and won't use a yellow yak. Who's got a yellow board????
Out gamefishing have had the full Jaws experience; was on burley duty, wide of Botany Bay, in la la land with legs stradling the gunnels of a 28 Betram, pounding kilos and kilos of mullet through the burley pot. Turned to check if the pot needed more mullet and there's the head of a dirty great tiger out of the water about to clamp down on the pot! Jumped from stern to flybridge in one go! We got that one, and he went 255kg.
Have had a solid wooden flying gaff handle break over my head and shoulders when a mako went apesheet as we tried to get him aboard. The gaff head got stuck in the handle, with the handle smashing me a dozen times before the gaff hook tore out of the mako. It then fell into the boat, missed my legs by an inch and ripped the crap out of anything it could get its jaws around, while entire crew huddled on flybridge. I was trapped at the stern with the shark between me and the flybridge ladder. Adrenalin is a good thing and, again, I joined the others on the flybridge in one leap. That one went only 200kg. Have seen a white's fin 20 miles of Long Reef (awesome) and lots of blues, smaller makos, big oceanic hammerheads (very impressive fish), monster oceanic whalers (these things are pure evil-looking, they really actually scare me more than maybe even a GWS) etc etc. Stopped gamefishing cause of the waste of ctaching these magnificent beasts for club point scores only. If you ain't gonna eat it, don't kill it.
Surfing encounters:
Scariest of all encounters was backbeach Seal Rocks with me and mate standing in thigh deep water about a couple of feet from the sand after having just paddles back through a very deep channel parallel to the beach. We both turn for some reason and see a solid shadow _ eight feet plus _ swimming along the channel towards us. Was about ten feet from us and had started to do the aggro, exagerated body movements which can mean this shark is hunting. We both did Olympic record long jumps from water to dry sand.
Scariest for mate was actually being chased in, along with two locals, at Arrawara three years ago when a pack of whalers started smashing into a school of small mac tuna, then turned their attention to the surfers. Watched it all from the land.
Strangest was DY about four years ago. Late march, sunny toasty, crystal clear water, mid week day, about 11am and maybe a foot or two of swell. Was mucking around on the mal almost exactly in front of the clubhouse when I spotted a whaler about five feet long _ just getting to the big enough to be scary stage _ cruising along over the sandbank in maybe three feet of water, twenty feet from the sand. Stuck my feet up on the mal as he/she was just ambling along....towards the flags which were in kiddies. He/she came within about ten feet and could see as much detail as in an aquarium _ even the little dots and holes in their snout which is part of their electrical sensory system, as he meandered about the sandbank shallows. He then turned towards the flags and thought I better go in and tell the life guards, who refused to believe me. Tools.
In the Tuomotu Islands December before last we had about a dozen black tipped reef sharks circling the boat at anchor all day every day. But they are generally a bit of a woosey sharks and on flat days it was fun to play bomb the blacktip and leap off the top of the boat.

[natofc]

Headies has the most sharks??

What do you base that information on? I have seen three massive rays follow in a fishing boat there, and the worst i saw today with my snorkel was a leatherjacket and a flathead!

By the way, jump in the boiler if you havent recently!

[surfanimals]

I've been unlucky to have them chase me at Narrowneck on the Goldy, The Southport seaway paddling over to Sth Straddy, The Pass at Byron and Wanda at Cronulla.....that's over 20 odd years and shit myself all 4 times !

[jose]

Only one and that was a week ago in southernish tasmania. Cloudy day mid morning on my own and looked out and saw this dark shadow about 15m away not sure what sort but it was about 6ft an dmoving in the sharp jolty way dolphins dont. Needless to say i went in pretty quickly. It different surfing in isolated places it doesnt take much to scare you