Shark attacks boat, swimmers flee

Press, 11 February 1986, Page 1

Shark attacks boat, swimmers flee

By

PETER COMER

Jagged tooth marks on the chine of his aluminium boat are Mr Bill Crump’s memento of a shark encounter of the “Jaws” kind in Golden Bay on Sunday. The park foreman of the Abel Tasman National Park was on a routine rubbish -collection run round the coastal resorts in his 6.5-metre work boat, and had just dropped off five passengers on Wharawharahgi Beach "to have a look round.”

“I was sitting about 100 metres offshore waiting for them when I saw a big black shadow cruise past about a metre under (the surface),” said Mr Crump. “I thought it was a giant manta ray, so I headed it off in the boat. I thought I would take off as soon as it saw me,” he said. When he realised that the “manta ray” was. a four-metre shark, Mr Crump started to follow it

in circles, hoping to drive it away from the beach. “It was cruising along the beach, just taking its time and not at all excited. There are a lot of people in the water up here at this time of year,” he said. The shark must have tired of being followed and decided to break away, Mr Crump believes.

“He took off at what seemed like 60 knots but he headed the wrong way, and drove right up on the beach,” said Mr Crump. “The people on the beach came running back, then he (the shark), thrashed back into the water and headed straight for the boat. "He hit it with a hell of a wallop, and he kept coming back. I was bowled over,” said Mr Crump.

“If I hadn’t been in a good strong, heavy work boat I don’t like to think what might have happened,” he said.

“He had his mouth turned up. The teeth marks are still along the chine of the boat.”

After the shark gave up the assault Mr Crump followed it to Separation Point, which divides Golden Bay from Tasman Bay, before losing it. Mr Crump has been the park foreman for five years, and holds a passenger launch skipper’s ticket. He is at a loss to explain the shark’s extraordinary behaviour, but admits that his driving of the boat must have annoyed it. "I wasn’t trying to annoy it; more keeping pace with it,” he said.

Mr Crump and his five passengers were trying last evening to find a young woman holidaymaker from the North Island who photographed the attack and the shark throwing itself up on the beach.