“Without warning at about 12:40PM, when I was around 5 nautical miles from Gaviota State Beach, a great white shark, which I estimated to be at least 15 feet long, bit and held onto my kayak. It attacked from my left side, with its head coming up from the water only a few feet from my kayak. There was not a hard impact. It bit my kayak where my left foot was located inside the hull, and its mouth wrapped half way around the hull. My left foot was actually inside the jaws of the shark but protected by the kayak.

The shark held onto my kayak for 10-15 seconds, during which it seemed relaxed and was not moving. Its head was huge, and I remember seeing its eye and a hole on the side of its head, as well as its gray skin. I put the left tip of my paddle against the shark’s head, and I thought about hitting the shark, but I didn’t want to anger it or make it thrash. The whole time the shark was latched onto the kayak with my foot inside, I was screaming like a little girl.”

Truly an amazing tale, and a reminder to steer clear of the natural habitat of these voracious predators! There seems to be a fifteen-foot-plus local Great White Shark off the Gaviota Coast…. Holy Shit!

Pictures by Duane Strosaker

Gaviota Locals Fear Great White Shark Attack

Duane Stosaker's Shark-Bitten Kayak

From KEYT.com: “Pismo Beach officials say a surfer is recovering from a shark bite. The 19-year-old surfer says a shark bit him on the foot shortly before 7:00 p.m. Friday night at Shell Beach near Silver Shoals. He says the shark was about 4 feet long, and was brown with dark spots. Officials say advisories are now posted, but beaches in the area will remain open.”

Cojo Ranch's Shark-Infested Waters Claim Another Victim

Our dedicated readers are familiar with our on-going coverage of the Bixby and Cojo Ranches, and the prolific quantities of Great White Shark activity associated with the area.

Cojo Ranch Shark Attack Carcass

It has long been the position of this website and its employees that the risks of entering the water anywhere in between Goleta and Pismo Beach is virtually suicide – with the frequency of massive Great White Shark sightings and their propensity for consuming the locals, even walking on the beach is an insane risk. Not worth it.

Anyone who treats life with such a cavalier attitude deserves to become the next meal of… the Fear Beneath.

A flurry of shocking Great White Shark activity has Santa Barbara residents staying out of the water, fearing for their very lives as a series of shark attacks and sightings have rocked this normally peaceful beach town and shaken ocean-goers to their core.

Over the weekend, a badly mauled sea lion was discovered hanging from a buoy off the “family-friendly” and extremely popular East Beach. The pinniped’s injuries were so extensive that it had to be euthanized at the local Marine Mammal Center. It’s good thing the sharks have yet to acquire a taste for volleyball players and homeless people…

This poor creature was the victim of a hollow-eyed remorseless killer. (Credit: Peter Howorth)

Soon after the poor sea lion was dispatched in gruesome fashion, the body of a Great White Shark was found washed up on the beach near the infamously shark-y Rincon Point. Surfers beware – even the directors of Santa Barbara’s Junior Lifeguard program have suspended operations because of the attack’s close location to shore. It appears that every time someone steps into the ocean in Santa Barbara County, they are leaving their life in the hands of Carcharias Carcharodon.

A day later, Rincon beach-goers rescued yet another shark pup and sent it back in to the ocean. Given the sheer quantity of shark pup sightings, it sounds to us as if the Santa Barbara coastline is a Great White Shark breeding ground. Who wants to dive in and do the research?

If one thing is clear, it’s this: Santa Barbara residents are advised to stay out of the ocean as much as possible – that is, if you don’t want to be lunch for the next Great White Shark that comes along.

(Photo credits to Peter Howorth.)

Two boats full of tourists got the photo opportunity of a lifetime after the 16-foot crocodile’s decisive win on a river in Australia’s Kakadu National Park Saturday morning, the country’s Northern Territory News reported.

“Nearly 100 people saw it all…and they were jumping for joy,” tour guide David Cameron told the newspaper. “They said this had made their Kakadu trip.”

The loser, a bull shark that had meandered up the aptly named South Alligator River in search of food, was about 10 feet long before it was bitten in half. The croc had the home-field advantage because the seagoing shark was swimming through fresh water at the time of the attack.

Cameron, a former park ranger, told the newspaper it’s not the first time he’s seen the two species fight for a berth at the top of the food chain.

“With the wildlife here, you just don’t know what you’ll get to see,” he said. “That’s the beauty of it.”

Shark Slaughter at Hope Ranch Beach

The seal intestines —spilling out a cavernous hole in the pelt of this once proud and magnificent animal— depart the blubbery body, just as the tragic seal’s soul departed from this rotting chunk of flesh in a fit of spectacular violence. Here at the Fear Beneath, we wonder – why would humans choose to risk a similar fate?

Shark Slaughter at Hope Ranch Beach

The 52-year-old surfer, local lifesavers and island boardriders fear the huge man-eater was responsible for the horrifying shark-on-shark attack off the island, east of Brisbane, which The Sunday Mail featured in graphic photographs in late October.

The smaller 3m white pointer, snared on a baited drumline set off North Stradbroke’s busy Cylinder Beach, was almost bitten in half by the bigger shark.

Mr Specht, who has surfed for more than four decades on the island, said he and fellow surfers who were used to swimming with sharks had switched to predator alert.

Surfer Russell Specht has survived a terrifying face-to-face encounter with a monster great white shark

“It was frightening. It was like a submarine heading towards me. I didn’t expect to live,” Mr Specht said.

He and several mates were surfing more than 100m off Main Beach when a younger boardrider shouted to them about the approaching monster.

“This thing came at me from behind. The other four guys with me, they took off to the beach and left me,” Mr Specht said.

“My first instinct was to paddle out to sea. Then I thought that this is not right, this is exactly what he wants me to do.”

Mr Specht bravely chose to sit quietly on his board and “eyeball” the shark – at least 4m long – as it came close enough to touch.

“He veered off, then he did a U-turn 10m away from me.

“I’m on a six foot three inch board. I’m thinking if he’s going to have a go at me he will eat me. But I thought you’re going to have to eat this board first,” Mr Specht said.

The champion surfer and Point Lookout Boardriders Club life member sat motionless on the board as the shark went directly under him, just 1m below, on its second pass.

Fellow surfers believe the same shark was hooked on a drum line off the beach later that day. The drumline “exploded” as the great white managed to free itself.

After spotting between 10 and 15 sharks off Main Beach in the past week, Mr Specht said he and other surfers were taking extra precautions and not surfing alone.

He said it was important to report his encounter just three weeks ago to warn holidaymakers that a dangerous great white shark was in local waters.

Surf Life Saving Queensland Gold Coast services co-ordinator Stuart Hogben, who has been on recent flights by the Westpac helicopter to North Stradbroke Island, supports Mr Specht’s suspicions about the great white being responsible for the attack on the other shark.

Mr Hogben saw several 2-3m sharks about 200-300m offshore along the island’s surf side during a flight last weekend. Other sightings were made off the Gold Coast.

Source: Paul Weston, The Courier-Mail

The shark did not attack her, and Ms Adamson said she only became aware of how close she was to the shark once she was out of the water. “There were people yelling at us to get out of the water, and I couldn’t hear because my head was under,” she said.

“But when I stuck my head up, people were yelling and screaming ‘Shark! Get out of the water’, so I got out of the water and up on the jetty I saw it just on the other side to where I was snorkelling. “It was probably about three metres long.”

Mrs Adamson said she had been looking down while snorkelling, so did not see the aquatic predator just metres away. “When you snorkel, you look down, not out in front of you,” she said. “But when I heard everyone yelling, I just swam, I didn’t look back.”

Tiger sharks are considered man-eaters, second only to the great white shark in the number of times they have attacked humans.

Mrs Adamson was thankful she had not seen the shark until she was out of the water. “It was scary enough as it was,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done If I’d seen it in the water there with me.”

Michelle Adamson Narrowly Avoided Becoming Shark Food

A spokesman from the Department of Primary Industries told The Observer there were numerous shark sightings across the state at the weekend.

He said swimmers or snorkellers should leave the water immediately if a shark was sighted, not swim at night, in murky waters, alone or when bleeding. People should also avoid swimming near mouths of estuaries, artificial canals or lakes.

As for Mrs Adamson, she said it may be a while before she gets back in the water at all. “My husband went snorkelling again, but I didn’t go back in the water,” she said. “I was a bit wary. I might go back with a group of people, but never by myself.”

Mrs Adamson’s near miss comes after Gladstone free water diver John Pengelly was bitten by a bull shark at Lamont Reef, near Heron Island, last month.

Mr Pengelly was bitten on the arm, receiving deep cuts to his wrist and forearm. He is currently undergoing 12 weeks of physiotherapy.

Source: Nathan Paul, Gladstone Observer

At 7.30 on an overcast evening, Orgias was paddling for a wave in the centre of Australia’s most famous beach when he felt a tugging on his left arm. He thought it was a surfer jostling for position.

”I thought another surfer had grabbed me and was trying to stop me getting the wave,” the 34-year-old says. ”Then in a split second it all changed and something really powerful and massive dragged me straight under and started shaking me around.

”It bit straight through the wrist but the way it latched on it couldn’t bite through the elbow. It shook and it shook and it couldn’t get through so then it let go.”

After an estimated seven or eight seconds underwater, Orgias was released and popped to the surface. Scrambling on to his board, he saw the sea turning red. His left hand was dangling by a piece of skin. As he paddled frantically back to shore, he kept thinking about his pregnant wife. When he finally reached the sand, two surfers applied a makeshift tourniquet.

Glenn Orgias lost a hand after he was bitten by a great white shark while surfing at Bondi Beach.

”The great white is probably the best kind of shark to be attacked by,” Orgias says. ”They do one of two things: they bite and test, which is what happened to me, or they just decide they’re going to eat you and they swallow you whole. Bull sharks are more aggressive. They’ll bite something and then just because it’s injured they’ll go it again.”

In coast-loving Australia, the shark occupies a special place in the collective psyche. A scary monster for adults, it’s a creature from the depths of prehistory and our own unconscious, a dark shadow with dead eyes and razor teeth.

”As humans, we do not view it as acceptable to be eaten alive,” says Dr William Figueira, a keen diver and marine biologist at the University of Sydney. ”And we’re just very vulnerable in that realm [the sea].”

The surprise is how rarely sharks attack. According to the Australian Shark Attack File compiled at Taronga Zoo, there have been 24 recorded Australian fatalities due to shark attacks in the past 20 years. There has been, on average, one fatal attack a year since 1791.

Not that the figures have been stable. In the 1930s, with Aussies starting to embrace beach culture, 38 people were killed by sharks. In response, shark nets – or ”shark meshing” – were introduced in NSW in 1937. The meshing is still there, put in place each year from September to April. Costing the State Government $830,000 annually, the nets catch an average of 140 sharks a year – not to mention the turtles, rays and dugongs.

Since 1937 there has been only one fatality at a meshed NSW beach, Newcastle’s Merewether in 1951. In Sydney Harbour the last fatality occurred in 1963, while the most recent NSW death was at an unmeshed Ballina beach in 2008. And for every fatal attack, there are two non-fatal attacks. Of those attacked by a shark, about 70 per cent survive.

A marine ecologist at Macquarie University, Dr Iain Field, says the slim chances of being attacked by a shark can be further reduced by choosing when and where you swim.

”I don’t go out into the water at dawn or dusk if it’s a really grey day,” Field says. ”I don’t go out at cloudy river mouths and I tend not to go where there are great schools of fish.”

As Amy Wilkes from Sydney Aquarium says: ”If you see schools of fish behaving erratically it could possibly indicate the presence of a shark in the water. The safest option is to calmly exit the water.”

Many shark attacks are cases of mistaken identity. ”Being the cleaners of the sea, sharks take the infirm,” Field says. ”And a surfer splashing about on the surface can indicate an animal in distress.

”The other time attacks can occur is when sharks are being territorial. Sharks can have distinct home ranges, whether there’s a resource there or it’s babies they’re protecting, that’s when they attack to defend themselves.”

Australia has an amazing abundance of shark species, Field says, but we have detailed biological information for only about 10 per cent of them.

”We are still discovering new species and new subspecies,” he says.

Numbers are hard to gauge but Field says there is compelling evidence the populations of most species are in decline.

In recent years, dramatic innovations in shark repulsion include the Shark Shield, which creates an electromagnetic field around the user. Some universities have made them mandatory for underwater researchers. In the future, such technology could potentially be used to create electromagnetic shields around beaches.

At Bondi in February, Orgias never saw the shark that attacked him. He survived, he says, because of his pregnant wife.

”She’s the reason I got in to shore,” he says. ”The whole time I was thinking about her and not wanting her to have to go through having a baby by herself.”

Orgias and I are having lunch in a CBD courtyard full of pin-striped predators. In between mouthfuls of chicken schnitzel, he shows me his prosthetic left hand. It’s the same type of hand that de Gelder now has.

”My arm comes to there,” he says, pointing to his forearm. ”It’s got these little electrodes. I can open and close the hand and move the thumb around. It’s like having 25 per cent of your hand.”

Orgias doesn’t want notoriety. He gives interviews to promote the blood service that saved his life. ”I don’t support the culling of sharks,” he says. ”I support clean oceans and good ocean management and that means helping shark populations. It’s up to people to be aware of the risks. The one thing that I promote is the blood service. When you get attacked by a shark, what you need is blood.”

All in all, it’s been a big year. In July, his daughter, Bronte, was born. ”I’m so happy to be alive,” he says. ”The shark attack was horrendous but it’s been a great year.”

And, like de Gelder, Orgias is surfing again. He gets out into the line-up as often as he can at Bondi or Maroubra.

”I knew I’d be able to force myself into the water,” he says. ”What worried me the most was that I wouldn’t enjoy it. But I had fun. And sure, I worry about sharks. I just acknowledge it and say, ‘Right, I’ve got a fear but I’ve also got the ability to go out there and enjoy myself.’ I have no grudge against sharks.”

Source: Sacha Molitorisz, Sydney Morning Herald

In a world first, great white sharks will be monitored over the summer when they move to within 500m of metropolitan beaches from Ocean Reef to Garden and Rottnest Islands where satellite receivers are installed.

Surf-life saving groups, scientists and wildlife officials will be notified immediately a tagged shark moves near any one of 18 bright-yellow acoustic seabed devices.

Since the receivers were installed in May and December, Department of Fisheries’ senior research scientist Dr Rory McAuley said sharks had been picked up in Perth waters on four occasions.

The last detection was in September.

“The use of the technology that delivers real-time notifications of tag detections hasn’t been used in an operational sense anywhere else in the world,” Dr McAuley said.

“The information we are hoping to collect will hopefully provide us some answers to the questions we are always asking about how long white sharks spend off our beaches, whether they come back, is there a season, do they come back one year after the other.”

In all, researchers hope to tag 100 sharks over the next two years as part of a $400,000 government-funded project.

Great White Shark Near Bixby Ranch, CA

The sharks are fitted with the satellite-tracking darts by researchers who shoot or stab the devices into the flank of the animals.

So far, 74 white sharks have been tagged. Of these animals, 67 were from South Australia and seven were in tagged WA waters.

“It’s not a complete blanket. We have put the receivers out the front of surf life saving clubs because that’s where, if we are able to implement a response, that is where it is most likely to happen,” Mr McAuley said.

“The system is live now.”

Great white sharks are vulnerable to extinction and are a protected species. A total of six people have been killed by sharks in WA in the past 20 years.

Source: Narelle Towie, Perth Now, Sunday Times

The whale died after desperate efforts by up to 50 people who rushed to Twin Waters on a rescue mission. The 3.8 metre female was first spotted at 6:30AM south of Mudjimba Island.

Originally thought to be a pilot whale, it was later identified by an attending Australia Zoo rescue team as a “pseudorca crassidens” – a false killer whale.

Workers Attempt to Revive False Killer Whale

The rescue team brought the whale into the shallows to conduct the identification, and efforts then continued to save the distressed mammal, which was believed to be an adult.

The injured whale had a damaged dorsal fin and evidence of “superficial” shark bites.

The rescue efforts stretched well into the morning as volunteers and veterinarians fought to keep the stranded mammal alive.

Australia Zoo veterinarian Tim Portas conferred with Sea World veterinarians during the rescue efforts.

A rescue unit spokeswoman said staff and volunteers were able to move the large whale from the beach and transfer it to a truck for transport to the Australian Wildlife Hospital at Beerwah.

“Unfortunately, despite everyone’s best efforts, the whale did not survive,” she said. “It underwent a necropsy at Australia Zoo to identify the cause of the stranding. The full cause of the stranding will not be known until the pathology results are completed.”

Those involved in the rescue were said to be devastated over the death of the whale.

Sources said sightings of the extremely sociable false killer whales are not common on the Coast. They prefer deeper waters away from land.

Source: Nikkii Joyce, Sunshine Coast Daily

They claim the company drops minced tuna into the sea to attract the sharks – a practice known as chumming – and are concerned this may modify the great whites’ behaviour.

Paua Management Area Council 5 chairman Storm Stanley said divers were really worried. “We feel there’s a real danger,” he said.

An “explosion” of fur seals had attracted more sharks to southern waters, he said, adding that he was unsure how to overcome divers’ “fears of being chomped”.

The problem had been discussed at a meeting involving divers, the company and the Department of Conservation, but Stewart Island commercial diver Ian Wilson said nothing had been properly resolved.

“There’s still a lot of differences,” Mr Wilson said.

DOC southern islands area manager Andy Roberts chaired the meeting but said the problem wasn’t easy to resolve because no organisation had jurisdiction.

The company had approached DOC to develop guidelines on how it should operate, he said. “But DOC’s only point of concern is whether there’s going to be an impact on the sharks or not.” DOC was still waiting on legal advice, Mr Roberts said.

Cage diving with great white sharks off Ledbetter Beach

Great White Southern Dive Company co-owner Peter Scott said he felt the meeting with divers had gone well. “There’s a couple of guys that still have issues with it. That’s their choice,” Mr Scott said.

Sharks were blamed for killing one person in New Zealand every 13 years, on average, he said. The sharks were more likely to be attracted by fishing boats dumping scraps they could feed on than by his operation, he said.

Stewart Island fisherman Garry Neave said he had seen many more great whites during the past four years, particularly in Halfmoon Bay, but was unsure what was attracting them to the area.

Source: Amy Milne, The Southland Times

Mr. Sojoski, 55, of Copacabana, was teaching his visiting granddaughter Summer, 12, to surf at Avoca Beach, when he struck trouble about 11am on Saturday. “I stepped on it originally,” Mr Sojoski said.

“But then when I stepped off it, it latched on straight away and it was the weirdest sensation. It was like a vice squeezing and squeezing. Then it started shaking my leg and moving it off the ground.”

John Sojoski of Copacabana was bitten by a shark while surfing at Avoca Beach.

Mr Sojoski managed to kick the shark away and still send Summer in on a wave, without telling her what had happened. “She didn’t know until we got back to the clubhouse,” he said. “I figured if I freaked her out, she might fall off the board.”

Water and air patrols were unable to locate the shark, with the beach reopened mid-afternoon on Saturday.

Mr Sojoski, a surf board manufacturer, counted 36 punctures in his lower left leg and was told to stay away from the water for 13 days. But as soon as he gets the all-clear, he’ll be back.

“I’ve surfed for 30 years and haven’t seen a shark – I didn’t even see this one,” he said. “But the water is the sharks’ domain and we have to respect that.”

The incident hasn’t dampened Summer’s enthusiasm for the water, with Mr Sojoski’s girlfriend Amanda her likely replacement “surf coach” for the rest of her holiday.

John Sojoski, Avoca Beach Shark Attack Survivor

Mr Sojoski couldn’t praise enough the actions of the people who helped him, thanking surf lifesavers, ambulance officers and Gosford Hospital staff – who he said were “so understaffed but still managed to have smiles on their faces”.

Source: Emma Herd, Central Coast Express-Advocate

The revelation follows a large, aggressive tiger shark menacing two kayakers as they paddled to shore from Mudjimba Island on December 20.

Queensland shark control program manager Tony Ham said the increased movement of tiger sharks was an annual event signifying the end of the breeding season and the start of feeding frenzies as the feared predator gorges on large schools of bait fish along the Queensland coast.

Mr Ham warned people against swimming in dirty water, near large schools of bait fish and in rivers, creeks or canals. “There’s nothing particularly to be alarmed about – it’s just that spring-summer movement of sharks around the place,” he said. “(But) people should obviously take care when they swim.”

A recent spate of Tiger shark catches off Sunshine Coast beaches has triggered a warning for swimmers.

Well-known shark hunter Vic Hislop said tigers were now coming closer to shore to feed on turtles, stingrays and dugongs because heavy fishing had thinned their traditional big-fish diet.

He said for every tiger caught in a net or on a drumline, hundreds more were lurking in the area. “Scientists are trying to work out what’s happening to all the turtles. “But I know what’s happening to them – they’re being eaten by tiger sharks,” he said.

“That’s why there have been more attacks and more people disappearing right around Australia. It’s not going to get better. People have got to learn to be careful.”

The Coast’s shoreline is protected by 11 shark nets and 78 drumlines. A total of 79 sharks, mostly tiger and bull sharks, were caught in 2008 – 25 more than the previous year.

A four-metre tiger shark can weigh between 400kg and 450kg, although five-metre-plus tigers can weigh more than a tonne. Their potential contact with humans is increased because they regularly visit shallow reefs, harbours and canals.

The tiger is second only to the great white shark in the number of recorded attacks on humans.

Source: Mark Bode, Sunshine Coast Daily

The Copacabana resident fought off the shark by kicking his leg in and out of the water. He was taken to Gosford Hospital with deep cuts to his lower leg.

The beach was closed while lifeguards and the Westpac Rescue Helicopter searched the water, but there was no sign of the shark.

Source: The Post News

Avoca Beach, Shark Attack Site