GWS nipped a free diver in California

[drrich2]

Hi:

California Diver Magazine recently posted an article, Captured on a GoPro: Santa Barbara Spearfisherman encounters a Great White Shark. The camera was on his spear gun; basically, he was heading along in about 10 feet of water, and at one point it bit his food and broke a couple of toes. He poked it with his spear gun to 'encourage' it to move on off. Looked like the viz. was a bit poor; I imagine that made the encounter even worse. Pretty neat little video. I didn't see whether he had speared anything; it would be good to know. One comfort non-spearfishing scuba divers often take from spearo/shark stories is the idea that 'If I don't spear fish, that won't happen to me.' Well, if he hadn't killed anything yet...

It does raise an interesting question for you spear fishermen. When you encounter a big, dangerous shark in close quarters, at what point do you poke it, and at what point do you say 'forget that' and try to shoot it in the gills or something?

Richard.

 

[scubadada]

Wow!

 

[ScubaJill]

I bet that was the longest 3 minutes of his life, finning backwards to the shore. The interaction with the shark starts at about 1:30 in the video, for those of you who are interested. After about a minute, I started humming the Jaws theme.

 

[ScubaJill]

Btw, I did get the chance to hear Brian Skerry talk last night about his experiences photographing different sharks around the world: Tiger sharks, Oceanic White Tips, Great Whites, Makos, and Blue sharks. Very cool presentation and a great photographer. He'd been chased out of the water a few times and lost some dome lenses due to aggressive sharks, but was never bitten. He did say he changed his split fins when swimming with Makos, because the fins looked too much like a fish fin. And Makos are known for nipping their prey's back fin and letting them bleed out a little before killing them.

Back to your point, I was wondering how often spear fishermen come into contact with aggressive sharks (versus opportunistic sharks looking to munch on some speared fish).

 

[The Chairman]

Wow... in ten foot of water too!

​

 

[drbill]

I couldn't help but wonder if his long free diving fins had anything to do with this

 

[Ghetto Diver]

^or low viz

Ending is classic Cali though...."Fxxxing Gnarly"

 

[HalcyonDaze]

^or low viz

Ending is classic Cali though...."Fxxxing Gnarly"

Clearly by then he was either in shallow water or convinced the shark had given up - at that point I would have still been legging it for the beach, possibly with a brown cloud in my wake. I've said repeatedly that I'd like to see a GWS while diving, given the right conditions. Those are not the right conditions - I agree that the poor viz was a major contributing factor. The freedive fins were probably not a factor, although they might have caused the shark to miss taking his foot off.

It looks like the shark got the fin on the first hit; I'm not sure if that second pass was an attempted second attack or the shark coming around to see how damaged the target was. Once it swam into view a third time and he jabbed it in the flank with the spear, it seems like the shark thinks "I didn't wound it, that fin was crunchy and bad-tasting, and it's in a stabby mood" and decides to go find something else.

 

[StefinSB]

That spot is shallow. He was most probably trying to fish in the kelp bed which has a max depth of 25 ft. The viz in the area where he encountered the shark was quite normal as the bottom there is sand. During the whale migration I once had a family of grey whales passing by which scared the heck out of me at first. The spot is about 20min north of Santa Barbara.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

That spot is shallow. He was most probably trying to fish in the kelp bed which has a max depth of 25 ft. The viz in the area where he encountered the shark was quite normal as the bottom there is sand. During the whale migration I once had a family of grey whales passing by which scared the heck out of me at first. The spot is about 20min north of Santa Barbara.

About seven years ago I was diving up around Goleta in a spot like that - relatively shallow, sandy, lousy viz. My buddy and I were swimming out and noticed a big, dark shape under us; my mind was definitely dropping multiple f-bombs until I saw the whites of the eyes looking up at me. It was just an elephant seal, but after that we looked at each other and I gestured 'Go to the bottom, NOW."