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Video recently emerged of a group of surfers being chased out of the water in Australia by what looks to be a 15-foot great white shark. Yep, that’ll do it. The surfers can be seen paddling as a group towards a rocky shoreline during decent conditions. The shark is swimming behind them. Australian musician Hein Cooper was in the water at the time and had this to say on Instagram:
Absolutely life-changing experience. 2 days ago Myself and a couple of mates were chased in by a big old Great White whilst surfing at home.
I was out off a point break with 5-6 others in the mid afternoon in a remote location. I turned to see a large fin coming up the headland from the beach (around 30 meters away). It was slightly tipping over which made me think it could be a seal (apparently that’s something whites do when they’re looking for food in the shallows…).
I turned away for a moment then looked back again to double check what I’d seen. It was considerably closer, moving towards us but in a relaxed way. I was much more certain it was a shark this time. I mentioned it to @genjipitt who was right next to me and he saw it himself. He replied that he thought it was a seal and then another guy chimed in and mentioned there’s been word of a few sharks around lately. Then, we all looked over and what happened next I will never forget.
A large fin around 30-40cm tall (it was the length of my MacBook Pro from one side of the screen to the other) moving straight for us around 7-8 meters away. I could see scars on the fin and patches of white which apparently means it wasn’t a juvenile. And the boys did some research and called a few people and it looks very much like it was a GWS around 3.5-4 meters long. So this thing was moving straight for us. I shouted ‘SHARK’ and we all paddled for our lives straight onto the rocks. ? Now for some reason the shark actually went around us and only really moved in once it reached our flank and the video footage confirms it. If it had wanted to, it could have been on any of us within a couple seconds. I think the kicking and scrambling made it cautious for a moment and when it had made up its mind we were all up on the rocks.
What has stayed with me most is the energy and presence it had. Absolutely magnificent creature showing us who’s really boss. Very grateful that we all made it out and of course now I’ve got a good story to tell ? The footage doesn’t represent the shark well but you can see that even once we were up the rocks it was coming for us!
A very solid anecdote from Hein. You can listen to his tunes, here, or take a listen, below:
