We weren't swimming on Saturday, even though it was a gorgeous day. Nevertheless, a 5 meter and two 4 meter white pointers (great white sharks) took advantage of the lovely weather to come into the town swimming beach (Middleton Beach) and have a quick bite. A teacher from a local school happened to be the unlucky bloke who was out for a morning dip and his leg was pretty messed up. Frankly he's lucky to be alive as the shark was distracted by a couple of other swimmers and a lady from the local surf rescue club who jumped in to save him.
Nancy and I went out the following day and watched for a couple of hours as the coast guard and surf rescue used a spotter plane, a helicopter and a couple of boats to try and herd the sharks out into deeper water. They managed to get one out but the other two kept circling back to the beach. Man, those were big fish.....one being approx 16 feet long, had a belly the size of a 45 gallon drum and ate meat!!! Injuries to people aside, it was quite fascinating. The big sharks don't normally come that close but presumably they were following food and a person was at the wrong place at the wrong time. There was a couple of dolphins (a mom and its calf) at the beach, salmon were running and a lot of bait fish were around - all guaranteed to attract sharks.
I (Boyd) used to swim at the beach occasionally but I'm going to have to rethink that!
Cheers,
Nancy and Boyd
