A 9 ft mako shark circled some boaters for about half an hour off New Zealand’s Hawkes Bay coast. Then it started attacking the boat’s motor. The body of the aluminium boat was unscathed, but the shark’s teeth left puncture marks in the outboard motor.
It didn’t leave until they bopped it on the nose a few times.
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Thanks Phillip!
Greg Sims, 49, was enjoying a dip just south of New Zealand’s Tukituki River mouth when he felt a sharp, painful bite on the back of his leg. Sims, a registered nurse, used his towel as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding before driving to Hawke’s Bay Hospital.
At first, Sims thought it was a stingray since he never saw a fin, but rays leave a sharp whip-like laceration. This wound was the shape of a bite, and there was a chunk of flesh missing. Ew. The hospital sent a photo of the wound to shark expert Clinton Duffy who confirmed it was a shark bite.
The lead suspect: a broadnose sevengill shark. It’s a common large coastal shark species, with an almost non-existent dorsal fin so you wouldn’t see it break the surface in shallow water.
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A New Zealand man (Nathan Maclure, 26) was adrift at sea for more than 30 hours after his jet ski broke down. Bummer. Not only was the weather nasty, but the dude was also visited by a few sharks before being spotted by a Russian boat about 8 miles off the South Island’s Canterbury coast on Saturday.
Might wanna get that jet ski serviced…
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Thanks Daire!
An 11-year-old girl is recovering in the hospital after being stung by a stingray at New Zealand’s Wairarapa beach.
She was able to get herself back onto the beach where surf life savers treated her injuries until a rescue helicopter arrived.
The girl, who was playing in the water when she was stung, had a nasty laceration to her arm and one of her knees but she was in a stable condition.
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And here’s what happens when a stingray gets pissed…
The woman who was skewered by a stingray while wading at Pohara Beach says she’ll swim in the sea again, but not at Pohara.
Maia Freeman was walking in waist-deep water at the eastern end of the beach when she suddenly felt “a sharp pain almost as bad as childbirth” on her right thigh.
“I tried to step backwards, but I felt it flapping against my leg. I really felt like I was being attacked,” she said. “I screamed at the top of my lungs, threw myself back so I was lying on the water and kicked like mad.
“When I saw all this blood coming out of my leg, I moved into the terror zone. It was so traumatic.”
And Maia wasn’t the only stingray victim in Golden Bay on Tuesday. Apparently, another guy got poked too.
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A 48-year-old woman was flown to the hospital by helicopter after being attacked by a stingray in New Zealand’s Golden Bay.
The rescue copter was called to Pohara Beach shortly before three o’clock this afternoon. At the moment, the barb of the stingray is still imbedded in the woman’s leg.
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According to the New Zealand Herald, a close encounter with a big shark added a little excitement to this summer’s first beach weekend when bathers were sent scurrying from the surf three times at Papamoa Beach yesterday.
The 8 ft thresher shark swam so close to shore it was clearly visible as it sliced through the shallows. The shark was seen swimming around at 1pm and when it didn’t move away, swimmers were told through loud speakers to leave the water. When swimmers realized what it was, they high-tailed it outta there.
An inflatable rescue boat was used to scare fish off to encourage the thresher away. The beach reopened 10 minutes later once the shark had swum off. Half an hour later it was back, coming right into the shallows. When it returned a third time, some swimmers were over it and stayed in the water to get a closer look. Huh?
Swimmers better think twice before taking a dip in Tasman Bay. The increased seal population is attracting more sharks, including great whites, to the popular New Zealand spot.
Apparently, seals are like “ice cream” to great whites… and who doesn’t like ice cream?
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A nearly half-ton mako shark that died in the Mapua estuary in New Zealand on Friday could help unravel the mystery of how the beasts breed.
The 12′ mako shark was found in the Mapua estuary by Denis Crawford (sunglasses) and hauled out by locals. Richard de Hamel from Touch the Sea Aquarium (white hat) coordinated the operation.
The shark had been floating listlessly in the tide, which was strange behavior for makos, believed to be the world’s fastest shark. It had earlier been stuck on a sand bar and then stranded on the beach opposite Mapua, until a man pushed it out into the water again. But it got beached again and died.
From the looks of it, the shark had been mating recently and was most likely carrying a pup, which got the scientists pretty excited since they know very little about the reproductive process of makos.
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