An Adelaide boatie recently got more than he bargained for when a great white shark emerged from the water metres from his vessel before disappearing into the deep.
Key points:
- Rob Cremasco was out on the water off Adelaide’s Semaphore beach on Wednesday
- A shark emerged from the water, launching itself at the bait
- Despite his initial shock, the boatie says it was an “epic” and “once-in-a-lifetime encounter”
Rob Cremasco was out crabbing on Wednesday morning with family and friends off Semaphore, along Adelaide’s northern coast.
After Mr Cremasco lowered his net into the water about 1 kilometre offshore, the group then spotted what appeared to be a 3.5-metre great white.
“We left [the net] out for about 20 minutes or so, hoping that it had gone, and we didn’t see it back again so we popped it back in,” Mr Cremasco told ABC Radio Adelaide.
“The boat started to turn against the little breeze that was there and, sure enough, he was there.
“He’s had a go at [the bait] and semi-launched himself out of the water.”
Mr Cremasco’s wife, Catherine, was filming when the encounter occurred, capturing the shark’s emergence from the water — a moment that prompted shock and shrieks of “Oh, my God”.
“We had a friend who was only about 20 or 30m away, Pete, in his boat, and I don’t know who was yelling louder, my wife or he was,” Mr Cremasco said.
“We have the crab net tied up to the cleat of the boat and [the shark] was just pulling, slowly pulling it sidewards.
“He came back around the boat and he has, like, eyeballed us as if [to say], ‘Thanks very much, I’m off now’.”
Despite the episode, Mr Cremasco said he was not deterred — and the group continued to fish.
“It’s pretty epic to see something like that. It’s an experience,” he said.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of encounter for sure.”
‘Nicely enjoy the sighting’
The shark sighting is not the first off South Australian waters in recent days and weeks.
A school of sharks was recently seen off Kangaroo Island, while a 4m great white was reported off Aldinga over the weekend.
“Every year, in summertime, you do get that increase in shark sightings,” Flinders University marine ecologist Charlie Huveneers said.
Professor Huveneers — who confirmed that the shark seen by Mr Cremasco was indeed a great white — said there had been “quite a few” sightings so far this summer, but that was “not completely unusual”.
“Whether this summer is more [in number] than the previous summer is a bit hard to tell and that’s because there is always differences in weather conditions, number of people on the beach, et cetera,” he said.
“The number of sightings doesn’t automatically relate to the number of sharks in the water either.
“Shark sightings are good to inform the public that there is a shark in the area, but you can’t really use shark sightings to get real trends of what sharks are doing.”
However, Professor Huveneers said even small boats afforded good protection — and a good vantage point.
“The shark is not going to jump out of the water to grab or bite you,” he said.
“Even if it is a smaller boat than the size of the shark, the shark is not going to be capsizing the boat either.
“You can just nicely enjoy the sighting of the shark.”
He said it was “certainly possible” that increased flows through the mouth of the River Murray because of ongoing flooding “might lead to a few more sharks in that area”.