Local surfers are used to share the waves with dolphins, argue with sea lions, even catch the occasional sight of a whale. But sharks? Naah. At least, that's what we thought. Surfer magazine tells the harrowing story of paddleboarder Vic Calandra, who fought recently with a twelve foot shark right off the coast of Malibu:
"The ocean was completely glassy when I heard something cut the water," Calandra recalls. "Usually it’s a seal or sea lion or a dolphin or sometimes a fish breaking the surface [...] This had a different noise so I stopped paddling and turned around and saw something big in the water about 30 feet behind me. It had a different kind of surface track and I thought it might be a dolphin, but the fin kept coming out of the water until it was 18 to 24 inches high."Calandra engaged in a long and "deadly dance" with the shark, swinging his board and slapping it with his padddle while calling for help. Zuma beach lifeguard Joey Everett joined in the fight: "We have a little training in situations like this at the lifeguard academy. It says in the manual to hit a shark on the head and the nose," he says. "So I went by the book, figuring if we could get the shark off Vic’s tail we might have a chance. What happened next was like a barfight. I paddled up and over the shark with my board and started swinging. I was screaming at the shark and bumping it with my board and hitting it on the nose but I had no idea if that was scaring the shark or making it more aggressive."
Taking swings and shouting at the big white, the two men eventually managed to swim to a nearby boat, and to safety. "The rumor of the shark spread fast," writes Surfer. "Some local residents pointed fingers at the Aquarius, the commercial fishing boat which essentially chums as it moves along, with bait being thrown overboard by fishermen along with the refuse of cleaned fish. Others noted that the Monterey Bay Aquarium shark pen which appears off the coast at Paradise Cove every summer might have something to do with it. 'Maybe one escaped from there and was pissed.'" No kidding.
photos via Surfer magazine
