Official GWS Thread

Z, Andre must be really happy! Great white shark: uncaged
shark week on discovery channel now.

Z, Andre must be really happy! Great white shark: uncaged
shark week on discovery channel now.

Andre Hartman is a really special person to be able to do that.. along with being a bit nutty. Thanks for the heads up!

Z

Last week at the 16th Annual Call to the Wall paddling surfing competition from Zuma beach to the Malibu Pier a local surfer was "repeatedly and aggressively" bumped on his paddle board and followed by a 12-foot Great White Shark for 20 minutes! The longtime Malibu resident and surfer credits Malibu lifeguard, Joe Everett, with saving his life from the Great White Shark. Read the story in the July 26, 2007 "Malibu Times."
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Great white shark joins Call to the Wall

Friday, July 27, 2007
Lifeguard Joe Everett, left, came to the aid of Vic Calandra as he was being followed, and bumped repeatedly, by a great white shark during a paddle race from Zuma Beach to the Malibu Pier on Sunday. Calandra credits Everett with saving his life.
A local surfer encounters a great white shark during a paddle race from Zuma Beach to Malibu Pier on Sunday.

The 16th Annual Call to the Wall surfing competition was enlivened with a shark encounter this year. During the Tommy Zahn Memorial Paddle Race, local surfer Vic Calandra had a run in with an approximately 10- to 12-foot long great white shark.

"Vic came in shaking," William Buckley, Call to the Wall competition coordinator, said. "He told us that a shark had bumped his board aggressively and followed him for twenty minutes."

Calandra, a Malibu resident and longtime surfer, said he was going neck and neck for third place out of 15 to 20 stand-up paddle board racers and was about a mile and a half off the coast from the beach at the beginning of Old Malibu Road when he heard something break the surface of the water behind him.

Looking back, he saw a partial fin about 20 feet behind him. At first Calandra thought it was a dolphin, but then the fin "continued to come out of the water"-the fin was 18 to 24 inches tall, he said.

Calandra said he veered to the right so he could keep an eye on it, but the shark stayed with him, and then it made a wide sweep coming closer, and then it made another sweep until it was only three feet away. Calandra said he swung his paddle to strike the shark and "it came up and brushed the back of my board, and then came up on the side of me and showed its underbelly-I could see it was great white."

Calandra estimated the shark to be 12 feet long and about three and a half feet wide (the surfer's paddle board is 18 feet long).

The shark started making quick turns, coming to Calandra's side each time, and he would drop to his knees and strike it with his oar, trying to "keep a distance between the predator and me."

Each time he hit the shark with the paddle, Calandra said, it would go underneath his board. It happened about five or six times, he said, and "I knew I was going to get struck at that point."

But he found a compatriot in Joe Everett, a lifeguard with the L.A. County Fire Department, assigned to the lifeguard station at Zuma Beach and who was a participant in Sunday's 10-mile-long paddle race between Zuma and the Malibu Pier.

"About an hour an a half into the race, I heard someone on a board about 800 yards offshore yelling, 'Shark!'" Everett said. "I headed out, thinking it was just a sighting, but as I got closer to Vic, I saw the dorsal fin following right behind him. I decided I wasn't a race participant anymore, but a lifeguard."

As Everett was paddling toward Calandra, the shark hit Calandra's board again and he got on his knees to strike it again with his paddle. Meanwhile, as Everett was coming to his aid, he was slapping the water to divert the shark's attention. Everett quickly aimed the tip of his 18-foot-long board at the shark's head to try and deter it.

"The shark kept bumping Vic's board and he looked like a circus high wire act trying to keep his balance," he said.

The two men positioned their boards close together, sitting back to back to see where the shark would be coming from next, and hit its back and fins whenever it came close. "We knew it was going to hit one of us," Calandra said, so they determined to reach one of two boats that were nearby. They started paddling, following each other carefully toward a fishing boat that was about 200 yards away, beating their oars in the water whenever the shark came near to deflect it.

When they reached the boat, Everett quickly climbed in and contacted the lifeguard station, which sent out guards on jet skis to round up all race participants and hurry them to the finish line.

"Our station boat was out there to monitor the race, but they were off at Latigo at the time the shark came, so they didn't see the incident," Everett said. "It was my first encounter with a shark." And he said he hopes it will be his last.

And Calandra, "for some reason," said he stayed on his paddle board and went on to warn the other racers. "I wasn't thinking clearly," Calandra said in retrospect. "Not at all."

Some Malibu residents question whether the shark pen monitored by Monterey Bay Aquarium's White Shark Research Project drew shark populations to the area. Monterey Bay Aquarium has been overseeing the research project from a location about a mile and a half offshore from Malibu's coast for seven years now.

"That trawler connected to the shark pen off Corral Beach is parked there every year," local resident Mike Gardner said. "If they're chumming to attract sharks, wouldn't that present a danger to people swimming here?"

Captain Terry Harvey, personnel information officer for the Malibu lifeguard stations, said he himself met up with sharks during long-distance paddles.

"The lifeguard division supports oceanic research so we don't really take a stand on the Monterey Bay trawler," he said. "The shark pen is a good ways offshore and if it really presented a danger to all the swimmers at Corral Beach, we'd be hearing about a lot more shark sightings."

As to the sharks, Harvey said, "It's their environment, after all."

The great white shark, while terrifying to a "Jaws"-familiar public, is now an endangered species due to over-fishing and the prices its jaws and teeth can fetch commercially.

Up until the age of one year, great whites feed only on fish. But as they get older, their diet switches to marine mammals.

"So, at 10-feet long, our shark was still young, but beginning to acquire a taste for blood," Everett said.

"These are very beautiful, complex animals," John O'Sullivan, curator for field operations for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said.

O'Sullivan has managed the Shark Research Project for the aquarium since its inception seven years ago and said researchers work hard to strike a balance between the need for research and the sensitivities of human ocean occupants.

"If you're concerned about species' survival, you need to study young sharks as well as adults," he said. "We hope to capture young great whites to tag and release. This means we need to be close enough to areas where the animals are found, but far enough away from harbors to not bother residents. We don't want to be attractive nuisances.

"I can assure you that the seals feeding on anchovies around the surf break present a lot more attraction for sharks than our research pen."

O'Sullivan said the Monterey Bay Aquarium would be happy to stage seminars or town halls in Malibu to address any concerns or fears residents might have. "Part of ocean advocacy is to educate the public," he said.

As for his first up close experience with a great white, Calandra said, "I never felt so small in the food chain. I was definitely low in the chain at that point."

Even with the shark diversion, Calandra came in 4th place in the paddle board race competition

It was a hard hit, I was thrown out of the yak out the back, port side. My first thought was a large boat hit me, but I didn't see or here anything coming. It also dislodged my seat, two fairly tight pegs. I don't know if it was an attack or taste test when I got back to the yak and started to climb back on I saw him still attached to the other side. Dan

Dan, thanks, I guess if you were thrown out port and back, it must have hit starboard and toward the bow. then it stuck around for a nibble or two. With that hard a hit, seems like it was some sort of prey hit, it didn't bother trying to scare you off first. Or possibly it did, but you were too busy retying your lure,  .

I feel a curiosity inspired taste test would be more gentle. of course since he outweighs you and your boat by a factor of 10, its 'gentle' might still dump you, but sounds like you were soundly ejected in a MASS*VELOCITY transfer of momentum.

J

There's a lot of reports of sharks biting animals and not consuming. There's otters, penguins, and even seals that have been left.

"It may be a case of mistaken identity or it may be investigatory or territorial behavior," said DFG's shark expert Dr. Robert Lea. http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mrd/whiteshark.html

"Consider the example of White Sharks biting but not swallowing Sea Otters"
Consider the example of White Sharks biting but not swallowing Sea Otters

You are right, they do size each other up and understand what another GWS and there's a full on hierarchy but I'm saying anything else that's not a GWS that is on it's turf is in danger. Wouldn't it be feasible that's why a shark would kill/wound and not eat?

Z

Z, I think they hit some things and decide they are not blubbery enough to be worth the danger/effort of eating.

a sea otter has no blubber, not like the corn dog that is an elephant seal!

So from the bottom, they see a silhouette, they nail it, and in the bite they can tell "chewy", or "crunchy".

"crunchy" gets left for the seagulls and the shark goes in search of "chewy" (a nice blubber encased seal).

Good thing our kayaks are "crunchy".

J

I'm wondering if Dan was "stalked" by the GWS before he got hit. According to "Shark Week - Episode1"...Sharks will follow a pray, then it will suddenly rush to it with a kill shot.

Dan, do you recall how long you were "stationary" before you got hit?

How long was the shark actually "chewing" your kayak? Say....10 to 20 seconds before it released itself and swam away?

I was cruising along watching the fish finder, no line in the water, marked some fish and structure decided to stop  thought I change the lour and had just finished and was reaching back for the rod and got slammed, never saw him till I started to get back on. So he could have been stalking me but I wasn't looking and after being stopped for a minute or two he may have thought that was the best time to attack. He held on till I was all the way back in the boat (witch didn't take long) nice of him to keep it upright so I could get back on. Dan

Good to hear you amonst us Dan...literally. Do you have any estimate as to how far in the air you were thrown?

Thanks for the info. Dan    IMO: Your first hand account of the attack is truly worth sharing with the rest of the WORLD. In every survival situation...the survivor becomes a great teacher and mentor to all.

Again, I'd like to thank you for stepping forward and answering a few questions....I'll have a Diet Coke for ya on our next fishing trip together

Good to hear you amonst us Dan...literally. Do you have any estimate as to how far in the air you were thrown?

No, happend to fast and was thinking what the f%&k hit me? I did have to swim a few strokes back to the boat and didn't see anything untill I pulled myself back on to the side of the boat.

Good to hear you amonst us Dan...literally. Do you have any estimate as to how far in the air you were thrown?

No, happend to fast and was thinking what the f%&k hit me? I did have to swim a few strokes back to the boat and didn't see anything untill I pulled myself back on to the side of the boat.

Wow. sounds like a pretty good prey hit. no damage to your back or anything tho?

Mooch, those sharks don't have to breathe,  , they can stalk from 50 feet down.
and the whole idea of stalking is that your prey doesn't see you,  .

So Dan, do you feel that the stop-and-go retrieve works the best?  . sounds like you paused
with maybe a couple twitches to fool him?

Also, I've seen the pics posted by fishhunter and it looks like some of those teeth marks went right through the hull.
Is that accurate? Do you think you would have sunk if you were 3 or 4 miles off shore?

J

[/quote]No, happend to fast and was thinking what the f%&k hit me? I did have to swim a few strokes back to the boat and didn't see anything untill I pulled myself back on to the side of the boat.
[/quote]

What a sight that must have been...Glad to hear the soreness is gone and that we'll be sharing some time togeather this weekend. It will be good seeing you. Love this sport, Frankfishing

See, this is why I wanted to remain The Lurker, a reader not a writer, barely computer literate and a slow typer. I will try to answer some direct questions. No, but I couldn't lift my arms the next day after three really quick re entry's, trying to fix my seat the last two times. Yes Yes Yes, there was one hole right in the bottom of the V and three slices, mostly above the water line. No, maybe, when I got back to shore there was only maybe a couple gallons of water in there. Did I do the emoticons right? Dan

Thanks for the info. Dan    IMO: Your first hand account of the attack is truly worth sharing with the rest of the WORLD. In every survival situation...the survivor becomes a great teacher and mentor to all.

Again, I'd like to thank you for stepping forward and answering a few questions....I'll have a Diet Coke for ya on our next fishing trip together

Mooch, I have a few pages written down on paper, when and if I finish I'll give it to you to post, I type slooooow. . I bring the Diet Coke for you..Bring me a beer! Dan

Thanks for the info. Dan    IMO: Your first hand account of the attack is truly worth sharing with the rest of the WORLD. In every survival situation...the survivor becomes a great teacher and mentor to all.

Again, I'd like to thank you for stepping forward and answering a few questions....I'll have a Diet Coke for ya on our next fishing trip together

Mooch, I have a few pages written down on paper, when and if I finish I'll give it to you to post, I type slooooow. . I bring the Diet Coke for you..Bring me a beer! Dan

dan, you can do it!  .  nothing like practice for those typing skillz. you are doing great!

if it comes through anybody else, it'll always be suspect to the whims of interpretation. you'll see what I mean.

you'll read something and it won't be quite what you said.

you want something done right like telling about the experience of a lifetime, do it yourself, you'll be happier in the end!

let's hear/read it direct, we'll make it up to you!

Mooch, if you do get those pages, I highly suggest a digi-cam shot of the pages and post them up, rather than type them in for the extra dose of believability.

the other option is a voice recording and somebody could make an mp3 file. or a video. How about come to lunch with me and Mooch and Bill (I'll pay for yours since you "bought" me mine and we'll make a video).

with the sinking thing, I think it speeds up. more water means more holes under water means more water means... you get the idea! But we'll have to get thornley and marmot to paddle out and punch holes in each other's kayaks to measure sinking speed properly,