Great White Shark Catapults Surfer in West Australia (Video)
In the notoriously sharky region of Western Australia, a hydrofoil wing surfer was catapulted into the air by a suspected great white. Miraculously, he survived.
On Monday afternoon, Andy McDonald was wing foiling between Margaret River Bombie and Ramp Breaks near Prevally in WA when the attack occurred. The shark hit him from behind and launched him in the air; then, McDonald fell back down, landing on the shark. From there, the shark pulled him and his board underwater.
And the incident was all caught on a surf cam. See below.
“Just out of the blue, something just went ‘boom’ straight up from behind,” McDonald said. “Like a super solid hit. I was flying through the air and just crashed into the water.”
After the shock of the initial hit, then landing back on top of the shark, that’s when the tussle began. McDonald started punching the shark, screaming for help, and preparing for the worst. “I thought, 'Well, this is it,'" McDonald said as the shark pulled him under.
“I was tangled up with the shark,” McDonald continued. “I don’t know what it was doing. It was obviously biting my board. Then it dragged me underwater. Took me under, dragging the board and the sail. It was stuck in my leashes. I think the weight of my body…it broke free. Then I was like, ‘holy hell, I’ve gotta get out of here.’”
Amidst the skirmish, somehow, McDonald came out unscathed. His board, however, had a massive, movie-like chunk ripped out of it.
"[The bite] it's probably 350 to 380 millimeters in diameter," McDonald told the ABC. “It might have been 3 meters, 3-and-a-half, somebody on the beach had said it looked like a juvenile white pointer [Australian for great white] bite."
As for McDonald, despite the terrifying incident, he was already making plans to return to the water the following day.