INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Australian Kayaker Pursued By Great White Shark, Protected By Electronic Shield

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 11:56 PST, Sep 23, 2016

A kayaker from Australia is crediting his Shark Shield with warding off a potentially dangerous great white after another paddler in Florida, who was not armed with the same technology, recorded his close encounter with a smaller, albeit more aggressive, shark earlier this month.

Angler Michael Robertson had hooked and then subsequently lost a pink snapper on Wednesday, according to GrindTV, when he heard a loud splash behind his kayak. Turning to investigate, he was confronted with the imposing presence of a 13-foot-long great white shark, which may have been attracted by, and responsible for subsequently stealing, the fish he lost.

Though he was fishing with a friend and not alone in Cockburn Sound, Robertson made every effort to avoid the great white, paddling away quickly. The shark pursued him, however, and when the angler lowered his camera into the water, he was able to film the animal as it closed in on his kayak.

Robertson was well-equipped for encountering a great white, however, since his kayak had been fitted with a device known as a Shark Shield. As the Inquisitr has previously reported, the Shark Shield is an electronic deterrent which, while not lethal or injurious to the animals, causes them instead to experience electromagnetically induced muscle spasms.

In Robertson’s video, the great white can clearly be seen approaching the kayak before turning quickly and decisively away when it came within range of the Shark Shield. The shark subsequently disappeared, much to Robertson’s relief, as the angler pictured a very different outcome for the experience had he not been sporting the proper equipment.

“The kayak is 13-feet long, and the shark was easily as long and a lot wider. I was thinking, ‘He could take a bite and take the whole front off if he wanted.'”

Interestingly enough, Robertson hasn’t been the only kayaker to run afoul of a shark recently. Half the world away, Drew Trousdell was paddling in the Matanzas Inlet, located south of St. Augustine along the coast of Florida, when he felt a tug on his paddle, alerting him to the presence of a shark.

Trousdell picked up his pace, heading toward shore, but the shark that had initially zeroed in on his paddle kept up with the kayaker, at one point even approaching the back of the boat and attempting to bite into that, as UPI notes. The entire encounter was recorded by a bow-mounted GoPro, and while Trousdell made it to shore without being capsized, his paddle was covered in bite marks by the time he did so.

The shark that approached Trousdell, while more energetic than the great white that followed Robertson, was nevertheless much smaller. Identification of the species wasn’t easy due to its brief appearance in the video, but George Burgess, who curates the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History, pointed out that the shark in question was likely a blacktip, a variety common to the region.

“It’s a fish-eating shark that no doubt interpreted the splashing of the paddle tips as movements of normal prey species. At this time of year the mullet ‘run’ is underway with thousands upon thousands of these estuarine/lagoonal species departing the shallows through inlets to mass up along the beaches prior to moving offshore to spawn.”

Burgess also noted that a wide range of predators find themselves engaged in hunting mullet this time of year, and surfers and kayakers take a unique set of risks by sharing the water with them. For reference, he pointed out that four different shark bites were reported in Florida’s Volusia and Brevard counties last Sunday, three of which occurred in New Smyrna Beach, an area often referred to as the “shark attack capitol” of the world.

[Featured Image by Elias Levy/ Flickr | Cropped and Resized | CC BY 2.0]

Share this article: Australian Kayaker Pursued By Great White Shark, Protected By Electronic Shield
australia florida
More from Inquisitr