If you haven’t yet seen the photos and video of the shark incident at Jeffreys Bay during the final of the JBay Open, then I’m sure you will soon. It was undeniably one of the craziest and scariest things ever seen on live viewing and TV. No reality series could have scripted that, because it was all natural and it really did just happen. The surfing world is mainly in shock, and the competing surfers and their mates definitely are! Wait, what really just happened?
What happened
In the first few minutes of the final of the Jeffreys Bay open Julian Wilson had just caught a wave and was paddling back up the point. Mick Fanning was out the back waiting for a set, and he was being shown on the live webcast and TV as they pulled up his stats, when suddenly we all saw it, a fin. The fin that we saw at first was the smaller dorsal fin almost in line with Fanning, and then a splash as the much larger tail pops out the water and then some thrashing and splashing. Fanning looks behind him, and lifts his feet up kicking; then gets a fin to the shoulder from in front of his board as the shark thrashed around to the other side. What happens after that only Fanning knows, as a wave came in front of the video camera, but he got separated from his board, leash got sliced, and he started swimming to shore, without any sign of the shark.
The ‘facts’
So you’ve already watched the video 50 times, what’s the relevance of this? Firstly, there was one shark not two as many people, such as the BBC, reported. Furthermore it was indeed a Great White, and when it comes to size, well its hard to tell. Given the distance between the caudal fin (tail) and dorsal fin, and the height of the caudal fin, it looks to be around 2.5 to maximum 3m, this is according to a Great White photographer from South Africa who goes out daily with the cage diving boats. The fin seen in the photos on the news is the caudal fin (tail fin) and not a huge dorsal fin as has been misrepresented in many articles.
Was it actually an ATTACK?
But was it really an attack? Was this blood thirsty creature, as it has been portrayed, really fought off by Mick Fanning; or was there something else at play? Everywhere around the world people are using the word “attack”! As ‘Wildblue Expeditions’ who work with sharks regularly put it, “IT IS NOT an attack, but rather an inspection or could be a territorial display. If the shark wanted to attack, it would have split Mick in half in seconds”. If you’ve seen a great white attack a seal before, you’ll know there isn’t very much room left for error. Watching the footage, and Mick Fanning’s account, this was an incredibly curious shark who swam extremely close to Mick Fanning, and then got stuck in his leash (from Mick Fanning’s account). What ensued was a rather surprised Great White and a rather surprised Mick Fanning! Despite this blood thirsty beast being right next to its prey, it didn’t try and bite Mick or even his board, and with a couple of punches from Mick in the commotion, as well as the boats heading its way, it felt happy to swim off unscathed.
In both of Mick’s accounts of the incident, both straight after the incident on the boat, and when interviewed the next day and asked whether it was trying to attack him, he says he wasn’t sure. “I don’t know what the shark’s intentions were. It definitely got stuck in my legrope, but I’m just thankful it was my leash and not my leg”.
This is not to say that sharks don’t occasionally attack people, even if they usually bite once and leave the scene, but its just rather reassuring for me as a South African surfer to see that this shark, although right next to Mick Fanning and an easy chance to attack, chose not to. Some people are saying ‘his leash saved him’, but surely a shark coming towards a surfer mouth open to attack, wouldn’t even notice a leash as it would have no resistance, and Mick wouldn’t have felt a pull? Yes sharks teeth are extremely sharp, and they usually swim with their mouth slightly open, so the leash being severed makes perfect sense and isn’t that surprising if it got tangled in it slightly; as it sounds like it was according to Mick’s version of the story. It was certainly the right call to call off the event and let those involved take a break, and appreciate life, but for other surfers, like local boy Remi Petersen, they saw uncrowded cooking Supertubes and paddled straight out to get some!
What now?
Renowned South African surfers, ecologists, divers and more have been pleading on Facebook and other social media platforms for world media to be responsible in how they portray this incident, but as with any news story, the only way to get millions to read it is to make it as dramatic as possible. Interestingly enough, in the interview with Mick on the boat straight after the incident, he never mentions it ‘attacking’ him, only that it got caught in his leash, and then was bumping his board, he never saw the face of the shark, only its back, during the whole ordeal.
Surfing brotherhood
What stands out more than anything from this entire situation, is the camaraderie and brotherhood that is shared amongst the world’s best surfers, and all surfers. Julian Wilson didn’t heed Mick or Gigg’s calls on the microphone to go in, but rather charged straight up the point to go and help his mate out. We saw Adrian ‘Ace’ Buchan with tears in his eyes as he hugged Mick so happy to see him okay. Parko raced over from his house where he had been watching with his family, and Kelly was in disbelief that something that could have potentially gone so wrong with a surfers worst nightmare, had turned out totally okay. Mick said he’d be happy if he didn’t surf another heat in his life, in so far as that being alive right then was much more important than anything else after his experience. Everyone will be rattled, and some may be scared of Jeffreys Bay in the future, and maybe we dodged a bullet this time, but amazing how something that ‘should’ have turned out terribly, actually turned out okay.
Chris Bond
South Africa
Surfing 22 years