A 10-year-old surfer has had a close encounter with a photo-bombing shark that shared a wave with him off an Australian beach.
Chris Hasson yesterday said that he was taking photos of his son Eden riding a wave off Samurai Beach at Port Stephens, 180km north of Sydney, on Tuesday when something unexpected and indistinct caught his eye.
He discovered he had photographed the face of a twisting shark just below the surface with his son on an apparent collision course.
Photo: AP
Chris Hasson said shark experts had since told him it was a juvenile great white about 2.5m long.
“I saw the second photo and [thought]: no way,” he told reporters. “I quickly called him in and whistled.”
“He [Eden] saw a shape in the wave and thought it was seaweed and felt something as he went over the top — he got his leg rope caught on something — but he thought nothing of it until he saw the photo,” Chris Hasson said.
James Cook University shark researcher Andrew Chin said the photographed shark was possibly a small great white.
“From the angle, it looks like the shark was spooked and is rolling away from the board to escape it,” Chin said.
“There is no way that this is a hunting approach,” he said.
Eden Hasson said he was glad he had not seen the shark until he was safe on the beach and saw the photo.
“If I was on the wave and saw it, I probably would have freaked out and fell off,” he told Nine Network television. “I was lucky I didn’t fall off.”
Port Stephens is on the northern coast of New South Wales, which has experienced an extraordinary increase in shark attacks since a Japanese tourist was killed by a great white in early 2015.
Chris Hasson said he was back in the surf with Eden and his siblings, aged 12 and five, on Wednesday to enjoy the final week of the school summer vacation.
“Everyone’s back to business. It’s too good a lifestyle sport not to,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not