A 73-year-old Australian fisherman said yesterday that he caught a far bigger fish than he hoped for when a 2.7-meter (9-foot) great white shark leapt into his boat, knocking him off his feet.
Terry Selwood was left with a badly bruised and bleeding right arm where the airborne shark struck him with a pectoral fin as it landed on him on the deck of the 4.5-meter power boat Saturday off Evans Head, 725 kilometers north of Sydney.
Selwood sprung up on the gunnel at the bow of the boat to avoid the thrashing shark and steadied himself by clinging to the tubular metal frame of the sun shelter, known as a bimini.
“I didn’t give it a chance to look me in the eyes. I wanted to get up and get on top of the gunnel because it was thrashing around madly,” Selwood told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Selwood used a hand-held radio to call the Evans Head coast guard and stayed on the gunnel until a rescue boat arrived. The coast guard crew rescued Selwood, but left the shark alone.
Why the shark flung itself over the motor and into the anchored boat is a mystery.
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