Surfers and beachgoers stay onshore Thursday at 56th Street in Newport after a surfer reported an encounter with a shark. Credit: Paul Rodriguez, OC Register
Compared to South Africa or West Oz, the OC isn’t the sharkiest of places. But it’s also not unheard for swimmers and surfers to have encounters with the feared creatures of the deep. On Thursday afternoon, a surfer out at river jetties on the border of Newport and Huntington Beach had an run-in with a six-to-eight foot shark, forcing local lifeguards to close down the beaches temporarily.
The shark, which was described as showing “aggressive behavior,” came up from below the surfer, who was sitting on his board, and bumped him up and out of the water at least one foot. This harmless and almost playful, but still admittedly horrifying, behavior is a familiar from sharks. They’re known to bump surfers’ boards from below as if to simply say hello or, “tag, you’re it!” Although most surfers would rather not play.
“They’ll swim up close to the board, and get startled if the surfer moves,” Chris Lowe, director of Shark Research Lab at Cal State Long Beach, told the OC Register. “In most cases, the surfer sees the shark take off after that, it doesn’t hang around.”
As a result of the curious shark, the beach from Brookhurst Street in Huntington to 56th street in Newport was closed and will remain closed until 3:30 pm Friday. At least nobody’s missing much with the whopping 1-2 foot current conditions.
