This damn big shark – somewhere between five metres and six metres – head up out of the water, its jaws wide open surging towards Ken. I turned around and saw this enormous fin travelling on the inside of Ken. It marked a moment of horror that still resonates.Įighteen years on, first-person accounts of those who swam with Crew and witnessed his death continue to have an effect on me, particularly those of his friend Jerry Ventouras. Ken Crew’s death in the state capital of Perth changed the city’s notion of itself as a beach-lover’s paradise. It was a decision that nearly cost him his life and has left him 14 years later with the still visible scars from the multiple puncture marks of a shark’s teeth on his legs. With no subsequent fatality to spook him and no inkling that an attack would kill a surfer further down the coast just six months later, Oppert had descended without a care in the world. But in the years that followed the death of Ken Crew in 2000 – the first such attack in living memory – many West Australians held the view it had been a one-off event, a freakish aberration caused by a “rogue” shark that had “mistaken” the swimmer for a seal. A middle-aged man had been mauled in shallow water in front of dozens of onlookers. Like many others in Western Australia at the time, Oppert was well aware of a fatal shark attack that had occurred four years earlier on a suburban beach about 150km up the coast. When the shark released its grip, the inflated buoyancy vest sent Oppert shooting to the surface, where he raised the alarm and was pulled to safety. Photograph: Mik Rowlands/Alamy Stock Photo It would be fair to surmise that the very implement that probably attracted the shark in the first place – by prompting fish distress signals that can travel far across the ocean – also helped to preserve his life by preventing the shark’s teeth from gaining full purchase above his knee. Oppert’s steel speargun, which that morning had shot some large fish, was at the moment of the attack positioned across his thigh. The pressure was so great that I thought if it gets any tighter, they’ll snap – she’ll snap both my legs off. I thought to myself, ‘Whew! It’s big!’ She was clenched down on both legs and the teeth were through to the bone. Throughout the dog-like shaking of his body that followed, he managed to pull the mask back over his face and purge it of water, returning terrifying visibility – an intimate view into the gelatinous gill slits of the world’s biggest predatory fish. I thought: ‘Oh, here we go.’īut he kept his regulator – the mouthpiece that delivers air – firmly between his teeth. The mouth’s opened up and she’s hit me in the guts with her nose. (Days later, while examining his equipment, he noted the depth gauge registered just 17 metres.)Ĭonsidering that great white sharks have been clocked swimming 13 metres a second, it is no surprise that the impact of the strike instantly pulled Oppert’s face mask down around his neck. ‘She’s going to attack from the back or she’s going to attack from the side.’ The funny thing is that I didn’t think about dying.Īn uncannily cool head gave Oppert the presence of mind to reinflate his buoyancy vest, preventing further descent. They hunch up their backs when they are annoyed, and she was annoyed. These sharks are like dogs, in their gestures and in their behaviour. going over to one spot and having a look and going over to another and having a sniff. The torpedo-shaped bulk of a huge great white shark inside the crater below loomed into view and, in the nanosecond that followed, Oppert registered both the animal’s curious demeanour – “like a dog on a scent” – and a firm belief that his life would not end there. The process, as always, involved the release of air from inside his buoyancy vest to enable heavy weights strapped to his hips to drag him from the surface to the ocean floor. I said to Dan, ‘You go,’ and he said, ‘No, you go.’Īfter entering the water for his third dive of the day, this time alone, Oppert, a 42-year-old prison officer, began his descent.
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