A 73-year-old fisherman has had a terrifying brush with death after a monster great white shark weighing 200 kilograms jumped out of the water and into his boat.
Terry Selwood, from Evans Head on the NSW north coast, was fishing at a bank just off shore over the weekend when he was confronted by the enormous man-eater.
He was knocked off his feet by the 2.7 metre-long beast, but was able to escape the potentially deadly position after finding himself face-to-face with the shark.
Managing to dial in local marine rescue volunteers with his radio, Mr Selwood was covered in blood with deep lacerations to his right forearm by the time help arrived.
'(The shark) came right over the top of the motor and then dropped onto the floor,' Mr Selwood told ABC on Monday.
The shocked fisherman was knocked off the esky he was sitting on and left sprawling on the floor of the boat directly next to the apex predator.
'There I was on all fours and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him and then he started to do the dance around and shake and I couldn't get out quick enough onto the gunwale,' Mr Selwood said.
'I was losing a fair amount of blood, I was stunned, I couldn't register what happened and then I thought "oh my God, I've got to get out of here".'
With his boat only 4.5 metres long, Mr Selwood said there wasn't much room for him to escape.
Caught below ropes, buckets and other fishing equipment, the shark soon stopped thrashing.
Marine rescue worker Lance Fountain said Mr Selwood was 'quite shook up' by the time first responders arrived at his boat.
'One (cut) was quite deep, so that was a slice of some sort, so possibly from the shark's teeth, but others were mainly from his struggle to get up onto feet, ' Mr Fountain told 9 News.
'A shark that size has incredible power and it was thrashing around.
'He said he thought it was going to break his legs, it was hitting them that hard. So he put his arms down to protect his legs, and that's when they got cut up.'
A fishing veteran who first cast a line some six decades ago, Mr Selwood said he had never seen anything like it before and that the incident wouldn't stop him fishing.
'I think next time I might find a crocodile to wrestle, just to stay in the limelight,' he joked.
The conditions were calm and Mr Selwood said there was no surface fish or clear reason why the shark would breach.
'I was using two little bits of blue pilchard to fish for snapper on the bottom of the ocean, but that line was straight under the boat, not out the back where he came from,' he said.
'For some unknown reason he just launched himself out of the water and he must have come up four feet out of the water to clear my outboard motor and drop straight in the boat.'
The Department of Primary Industries said the shark was a great white which was removed from the boat with a forklift and taken for an autopsy to confirm its age and gender.
Music: "Unwritten Return" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Source: Marine Rescue NSW, ABC , Daily Mail
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/patryn.worldlatestnews
Terry Selwood, from Evans Head on the NSW north coast, was fishing at a bank just off shore over the weekend when he was confronted by the enormous man-eater.
He was knocked off his feet by the 2.7 metre-long beast, but was able to escape the potentially deadly position after finding himself face-to-face with the shark.
Managing to dial in local marine rescue volunteers with his radio, Mr Selwood was covered in blood with deep lacerations to his right forearm by the time help arrived.
'(The shark) came right over the top of the motor and then dropped onto the floor,' Mr Selwood told ABC on Monday.
The shocked fisherman was knocked off the esky he was sitting on and left sprawling on the floor of the boat directly next to the apex predator.
'There I was on all fours and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him and then he started to do the dance around and shake and I couldn't get out quick enough onto the gunwale,' Mr Selwood said.
'I was losing a fair amount of blood, I was stunned, I couldn't register what happened and then I thought "oh my God, I've got to get out of here".'
With his boat only 4.5 metres long, Mr Selwood said there wasn't much room for him to escape.
Caught below ropes, buckets and other fishing equipment, the shark soon stopped thrashing.
Marine rescue worker Lance Fountain said Mr Selwood was 'quite shook up' by the time first responders arrived at his boat.
'One (cut) was quite deep, so that was a slice of some sort, so possibly from the shark's teeth, but others were mainly from his struggle to get up onto feet, ' Mr Fountain told 9 News.
'A shark that size has incredible power and it was thrashing around.
'He said he thought it was going to break his legs, it was hitting them that hard. So he put his arms down to protect his legs, and that's when they got cut up.'
A fishing veteran who first cast a line some six decades ago, Mr Selwood said he had never seen anything like it before and that the incident wouldn't stop him fishing.
'I think next time I might find a crocodile to wrestle, just to stay in the limelight,' he joked.
The conditions were calm and Mr Selwood said there was no surface fish or clear reason why the shark would breach.
'I was using two little bits of blue pilchard to fish for snapper on the bottom of the ocean, but that line was straight under the boat, not out the back where he came from,' he said.
'For some unknown reason he just launched himself out of the water and he must have come up four feet out of the water to clear my outboard motor and drop straight in the boat.'
The Department of Primary Industries said the shark was a great white which was removed from the boat with a forklift and taken for an autopsy to confirm its age and gender.
Music: "Unwritten Return" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Source: Marine Rescue NSW, ABC , Daily Mail
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/patryn.worldlatestnews
Comments
Post a Comment