Folks on the forum often express fear of shark attacks during ocean swims but the below article about a great white attack this weekend is pretty typical. Shark thinks surfer is a lounging seal, takes on bite then spits him back out. The comments from the local shark researcher makes this pretty clear we are not their preferred meal…especially triathletes considering how skinny many of us are.
By the way the area this occurred is at the mouth of Tomales Bay which is a known shark breeding area and used to have a shark fishing derby many years ago. Maybe not the smartest place to surf but with huge swells this weekend they couldn’t resist.
Guerneville man survives shark attack
Surfer’s injuries minor after being dragged 15 feet underwater off Marin County beach
By CAROL BENFELL
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A Guerneville surfer walked away Sunday with only minor bite marks after being dragged underwater by a 15-foot-long great white shark while paddling in the ocean off Dillon Beach in Marin County.
It was Royce Fraley’s third shark incident. He was bumped by one near the Russian River and in 2002 he helped a fellow surfer who had been attacked.
The 43-year-old Fraley’s surfboard bore the brunt of Sunday’s attack, with a small chunk missing and scarred with a deep imprint of jagged teeth in an 18-inch-wide circle of jaws.
“He was very lucky,” said Marin County Sheriff’s Deputy Stephen Debrunner. “He was shaken up, but the wound wasn’t even enough to bandage. It broke the skin and made red marks, like the marks from a dog bite.”
Reached by phone later, Fraley’s wife said he did not want to talk about the incident.
The attack happened shortly before noon as about 20 surfers were enjoying storm-driven autumn swells north of the mouth of Tomales Bay in an area known as the “Shark Pit.”
Fraley had no warning as the shark apparently struck from below.
Lying on his stomach on his board, Fraley was paddling when he felt a mountain of water push him up into the air, said Marin County Fire Capt. Rick Wonneberger.
He felt a sting and a bite and then was dragged 15 feet underwater, still clinging to his surfboard. Then, as suddenly as it had attacked, the shark let go and Fraley “popped up like a cork” to the surface, Wonneberger said.
Other surfers saw what had happened, and five or six paddled over to Fraley, talked to him quietly and then accompanied him as he paddled to shore.
“He was freaked from what had happened, but physically he wasn’t injured much,” said Brit Horn, a state park ranger who was off duty and surfing there at the time. “He’s one of the best surfers in the area.”
Fraley escaped with only bite marks on the inside of his right leg. Fire Department medics checked him over before releasing him. Fraley declined an offer of an ambulance and left the beach by himself, driving his car.
“He was very lucky. There were only four or five little nicks,” Wonneberger said. “But there were some good-sized teeth marks on the board and a little bit of blood from the shark’s jaws.”
Fraley was familiar with the danger posed by sharks. One nudged him as he surfed the mouth of the Russian River, and in 2002 he helped administer first aid to surfer Mike Casey when the Santa Rosa attorney was bitten to the bone by a great white off Salmon Creek Beach, he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003.
The catch-and-release behavior is typical of great white sharks, which are very selective about what they eat, said Peter Klimley, Petaluma author and shark researcher at Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory.
Klimley estimated the length of the shark at 15 feet, based on the 18-inch-wide bite mark left in Fraley’s surfboard and said great whites are the only predatory sharks in this area at this time of year.
“A shark that big could easily eat that person, could circle the board, back off and eat him,” he said.
But the sharks like to feed on seals, which have 50 percent body fat. They really aren’t interested in surfers, who are mostly muscle and bone, Klimley said.
Klimley said that several years ago, also off Dillon Beach, a shark seized a surfer by the ankle, pulled him underwater and then released him otherwise unharmed.
He said great white sharks are drawn to the Sonoma and Marin County coasts in autumn, following the migration of yearling harbor seals.
“White sharks are feeding now on seals the other side of Tomales Point” from Dillon Beach, Klimley said. “They’re there all the time through the fall months, yet it’s the one surfer that gets bitten. If they really fed on humans, we’d have many, many more attacks.”
In the past 45 years, there have 16 reports of shark attacks or bumpings off the Marin County Coast, all but two of them in or near Tomales Bay.
No shark-related deaths have been reported off the Marin and Sonoma coasts since the state Department of Fish and Game began keeping records in 1961. An Auburn man diving for abalone in Mendocino County was killed by a great white shark in August 2004.
After Sunday’s attack, the Marin County Sheriff’s Department urged surfers to get out of the water. The Bodega Bay Coast Guard station also sent a boat crew to warn any surfers that might have been too far from shore to hear the warning.
The Coast Guard also warned surfers at Doran Beach at Bodega Bay of the attack.
Owners of Dillon Beach, a private beach, were warning visitors as they arrived, Debrunner said.
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