Great White Shark Encounter - True Story

[Chris]

I thought I would share with you guys a story about a fishing experience my little brother had off Lakes entrance on the weekend.

Ben and his mate took off from lakes entrance early, they were approx 8k offshore. The guys were catching mostly school shark, which were all too small to keep, so they had to keep throwing them back.

After about 4 hours of fishing, the boys were ready to pack it in. The would the reels in, and went to pull the sea anchor in. A sea anchor is a large parachute style bag that sits in the water and controls the rate of drift.

Unbeknowns to the boys, there was a 3rd member watching this take place. A monster great white came from nowhere and grabbed the sea anchor, and gently pulled the boat (17foot haines) backwards.

The guys were rightly sh*tting themselves at this point.

The shark moved around the boat quietly, and eyed the lads off.

My brother said "it was the biggest thing i have ever seen, it looked like a ****ing submarine, it was bigger than the boat".

I was lucky enough to be able to measure several different teeth marks on the remains of the sea anchor, and 3 different experts esimated the sharks length of 16ft minimum, to 19ft.

The shark is lucky Ben is ok, if it had hurt him, i would have tracked it down and whooped its ***. Seriously though, it raises some questions.

Are these big whites becoming more and more prevalent?

How many "missing persons" are the result of unreported shark attatcks?

Should we be killing the barstards?

Is the overfishing of our waters causing the sharks to look for alternative prey?

Do the SA Great white cage dive companies agitate sharks by showing them divers in cages?

Im just happy that Ben is OK, seriously, if the shark wanted to, it could have ripped the back off the boat.

Pls discuss......