Great white shark sinks its teeth into fisherman’s boat
It was like a scene from the movie “Jaws,” a great white shark circles a fisherman’s small skiff and then launches itself into the craft nearly knocking it over.
That’s how fisherman Mark Davis described an incident off Capitola on the northern end of Monterey Bay on Friday morning, when a shark sank its teeth into the bow of his 15-foot boat.
“It was a full-on slam attack from down below,” Davis told KSBW-TV. “He came and hit the boat at full speed and knocked it into the air … He was aggressive and fired up.”
Davis said smaller sharks had swum up to him before, but never one quite so big.
“This thing was huge,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything that large in the water before, and I’ve seen a lot of fish.”
Sean Van Sommeran, a researcher at the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, told the station that the teeth marks left on the boat’s bow indicated the great white was at least 15 feet long and weighed perhaps a ton.
Davis was fishing for squid bait when the shark attacked. He wasn’t injured, but said he was glad he didn’t fall into the water.
Eddie Rhee-Pizano, state parks lifeguard supervisor for Santa Cruz, said sharks do occasionally bite boats.
“The shark will bite a boat for a variety of reasons,” he said. “If a shark has shown aggressive behavior, if it’s attacking, we’ll have signage posts for about three days within a mile of the beach.”
No warning signs have been posted in connection with Friday’s attack offshore.
Twitter: @alexiafedz
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