Shark Advice for Surfers
I have surfed all my life and, no matter how much I try to avoid it, the subject of ‘sharks’ pops up every now and again.
A few times the buggers have popped up, quite literally, next to me.
On all but one occasion I ignored them; my reasoning was that they were too small to worry about. More likely I was subconsciously relying on the fact that they were simply not interested in my preservative-laden non-organic carcass. And in each case there were also the fact that the other 20-odd guys out there didn’t react; who was going to be the wimp that cracked first eh?
The other solitary occasion was different. I was surfing late on a winter day by myself at a deserted beach about 4 hours south of Sydney. The biggest shark you can imagine emerged out of the water, chasing some fish, not more than 5 meters away from me.
I swear I literally levitated out of the water in my efforts to catch the next wave, which just happened to be a monster close-out that put me right through the wringer. Even so, I didn’t stop moving until I was on barely wet sand.
I did not go back into the water that day.
There are a few popular myths among surfers on the subject of sharks. Unfortunately, no one really knows which are true and which are not.
1. Urination attracts the buggers. So if you care, don’t, even if you are freezing to death.
2. Keep your dogs out of the water people. They also attract sharks.
3. You paddling on a board – from below a shark thinks you are a fish in distress. Someone once asked a shark this and it confirmed it.
4. Most sharks are not really interested in Homo sapiens sapiens – they only attack them by mistake, thinking they are some odd fish in distress.
5. Shark repellents don’t work – only a wally would try.
6. There is safety in numbers – someone else is likely to get eaten and not you.
7. Sharks are more likely to attack a solitary surfer. Or so it seems when your mind wanders onto the subject waiting for a set, with not another person in sight.
8. Sharks are more present at dusk and dawn, when you are more likely to want to surf.
9. If a shark attacks you the best thing you can do is use your board as a weapon – there’s no point trying to get away.
10. Dolphins and sharks don’t mix – so you are safe if there are dolphins around. Except when the shark decides it wants to eat a dolphin.
11. Stay away from schools of fish and their telltale seagulls in pursuit – the fish attract sharks.
12. Ignore shark alarms – these are set off by clubbies that have nothing better to do than see a shark in every lump of seaweed or dolphin.
13. Don’t ignore shark alarms that are the result of a fly-over – these guys can actually see sharks.
14. There are more sharks than there used to be because (a) over-fishing is driving the sharks closer to shore to find fish to eat, (b) the warming waters are driving the bigger sharks north (or is that south?); and (c) they are now under fishing sharks.
15. There are a bunch of morons that want to protect sharks. They tend to live in the inner city suburbs, buy their food at Macro, are members of GetUp, and they rarely enter the surf for anything other than a quick splash. They, the sharks (and maybe the people too), should be fished to extinction and bugger the food chain.
16. Shark nets don’t do anything but we should have more of them.
17. There are more shark attacks because there are more people in the water.
18. There are more shark attacks because there are more sharks in the surf.
19. There are more shark attacks because there are more GoPro’s in the water. Sharks hate them.
20. There are not more shark attacks than before, just more GoPro’s.
21. Recreational fishermen and surfers don’t mix. The former tend to do things to attract fish, like put out burley pots. This also happens to attract sharks. Don’t surf anywhere near burley of any sort.
22. Be nice to lids; sharks see them as an entree which gives you a chance to get out of the water before the mains are served.
23. Someone once invented an armoured wetsuit. Sort of like neoprene crossed with Bilbo’s mithril shirt. But you couldn’t bend your legs or arms in it.
24. Sharks don’t like white water so you are safe once you are in it, apparently. The evidence is that you can’t take a photo of sharks, or anything else, in white water. My advice would be to keep paddling.
25. Sharks are colour blind so you should have a blue board and a blue wetsuit to camouflage yourself in the water. If you believe this nonsense then you deserve to be shark bait.
26. Once told to me by a long haired Bali lifer; if you snag a shark while fishing always let it go otherwise shark karma will come and get you (‘man’). As a young teenager I once accidentally caught a large shovel nosed shark while fishing for whiting in a dinghy off our place in Jervis Bay. I kept the shark but had to get out of the boat before it injured me. My dad thought it was funny, watching from the shore. In any case the bad karma hasn’t got me yet.
27. I had a period where I intermittently used a waveski, a.k.a. a goat boat. These wonderfully difficult and exhilarating buggers have been chased out of the water due to the propensity of their riders to catch every wave based on their greater boat speed. Even so, they had certain shark-proof benefits; a faster get away, no limbs dangling in the water and a paddle to ward off sharks. I never got to use this weapon on a shark but I did smack one particularly obnoxious local with it once; and then scarpered almost as quickly as the time I saw the big shark.
28. Shark stories like all fishing stories get bigger in the telling. Always depreciate any local advice on the matter.
29. You really have to get sharks out of the brain. There is nothing worse than sitting on your board worrying about sharks. It ruins the experience.
30. Even so, you will have some friends or family members that insist on discussing the subject, driven by some GoPro’ed incident on the news. They might even start giving you useful advice culled from the above list and gleaned from some ‘Wakeup Australia’ TV nonsense . If so, tell ’em to fuck off and go and have a surf.
offshore westerly 