Crazy MoFo goes Paddling with Great Whites

[gunDriller]

http://blogs.surfermag.com/office-blog/chuck-pattersons-close-encounter/

that's a good article about a guy that is either on a longboard or a Stand-Up Paddle (SUP) board.

he is about 200 yards from shore and videotapes the great whites.

the surfers see smaller great whites (7 feet) all the time. he saw 2 on this paddle session & got video of the smaller one.

http://vimeo.com/14054518

"Me My Shark and I"


I used to swim south of San Onofre in north country San Diego. a few hundred yards off shore. once i found out in 2008 that great whites were feeding on humans again (1959 & 2008 are the last 2 known fatal shark attacks in the La Jolla - Solana Beach area), I got a little nervous and now stay closer to shore ... if i go in the water.

of course, living in Sonoma County - one of the sharkiest places in the world - i stick to chlorinated water for swimming.

[ximmy]

I heard about this yesterday... amazing story...
-----
Chuck, you posted a pretty amazing video on the Internet this morning. Tell us about it.

I actually surfed the day before [at San Onofre]. I’ve seen a bunch of those sharks for a long time, and I’ve been dying to get some footage of them, and finally everything worked out great and just putting it up on Facebook, I was like, “Holy crap, I can’t believe how many people have seen it.” I put it up early this morning before work and I’ve probably gotten about 180 – 200 emails through Facebook or whatever.

But the day before I went for a long paddle and caught a couple of waves [in the same area]. We saw two sharks that afternoon and they kind of messed around with us for ten minutes or so, and I’ve always wanted to get a good shot of them and every time I have a water camera in my pocket, the minute I pull it out, they’re gone.

So finally, I ended up deciding that I’ve got all these GoPro Cameras, so I might as well do something where I maybe can reach out to them and not startle them. So I just went out with the intent to go for a paddle and took it with me with the attitude, “If I see one great. And if not, no big deal.” As luck would have it, within five minutes of being in the water a bigger shark kind of startled me, and then by the time I was getting all my camera stuff, when I was extending the pole it kind of made a lot of noise, and the thing took off. They don’t like that, or at least that one didn’t like the loud metal noise against the board. And then five minutes later, “Boom!” That seven-footer came around out of nowhere and hung out and was really just curious. It kept doing circles around me for about ten minutes.

So you actually saw two Great Whites Sharks while you were out there. But there’s only one on film, right?

Yeah. I had [the camera] at my feet, and the bigger shark came around and caught me off guard …I startled it I guess, because I kind of leaned towards it, and it did a quick turn and hit the tail of my board with its tail and shot away. I was super startled then. I thought maybe this wasn’t a good idea, because that was a much bigger shark than I had expected, and then I fumbled around and pulled the extension on my pole out and kept hammering my board doing a funky noise with it like a paddle hitting the board, and [the shark] came close and then suddenly that noise made it do a wider circle and I never saw it again, which was weird you know?

My heart was definitely racing at that time going, “Maybe I’m in a little over my head,” because I was easy a couple hundred yards from anybody. And I was like, “Maybe I should go…” like comfort in numbers.

So you were alone?

I was alone the whole time and then a girl came paddling over because she saw what was going on and was curious and I said, “One shark here is pretty big, so be careful,” then the second one came and he was kind of checking me out. He was doing circles around me so I was trying to paddle in a circle as well so I could keep a view on him. So I took a couple of photos with my camera and then switched it to video. And then I was probably messing around with him for about ten or twelve minutes and then he took off and I never saw him again after that.

http://blogs.surfermag.com/office-blog/chuck-pattersons-close-encounter/

[Awoke]

I would not be comfortable in that position.

[BrewTech]

I'm probably not going to be doing much swimming at San Onofre anymore... lol.

I was just down there Sunday - there was a surf contest going on at the bottom of trail six. The GWs must not be much of a danger because there are hundreds of surfers there almost every day but near zero attacks.

[StackerKen]

I saw that video on surfline.com the other day too. Pretty crazy.
I grew up camping and surfing San Onofre. and Trestles (bout a mile north) I never saw any sharks there.
Just Lots of dolphins
Although Once, I saw a 6 foot hammer head shark at Oceanside. That was scary.

Like Brew tech said, that area has tons of surfers and I have never heard of an attack there.

I am planing on going down to Trestles later in the week when the surf is expected to pick up. :)

Maybe that video will make it a tiny bit less crowded. ;D

[zap]

Nope, Nope, No, You will not see me surfing or swimming on the California coast, I don't want to be sharkbait!

Ken you be careful out there. ;D