‘It Hit Me From Below’ — Windsurfer Bitten In Santa Cruz County

The teeth of a Great White shark are a macabre subject.

Unlike the 32 chombers that line our mouths, a Great White’s tooth is made of an outer layer of mineralized tissues called an enameloid. It’s one of the most dense structures made in the animal kingdom, and Great Whites have several sharp rows that are continuously replaced throughout their lifetime.

Yesterday evening, a man had an unfortunate personal encounter with those oversized incisors and was bitten in the foot while wind surfing at Davenport Landing, a small coastal nook about 15 miles north of Santa Cruz. A bystander’s video of the wind surfer’s board showed bite marks damn near covering the whole tail block tail. Fortunately, it appears the victim did not suffer life threatening injuries and was treated by benevolent bystanders on the scene. 

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“We were there for a friend’s birthday party,” said Jack Keane, who resides in Santa Cruz and previously worked as an EMT. “I’d just taken a picture of the sunset. And there was a kitesurfer coming into shore, yelling at his buddies something like, ‘It hit me from below.’”

It’s far from the first time this has happened in this part of California. In just the past two years, there have been more than a dozen shark attacks in California, half of them on surfers. The stretch of coast from Big Sur up to the Bay Area is frequently beset by big grey fish, especially in Fall feeding (on seals) season. 

During Stab’s inaugural Shark Week series, writer Holden Trnka interviewed two researchers studying great white shark populations off the secluded islands west of San Francisco. Their last static statistical analysis with data from 2011 to 2018 estimated there were around 350 white sharks in the so-called Red Triangle. 

As the group gathered around the battered, bitten board, the wind surfer was still talking, still walking around, perhaps running on adrenaline, Jack recalled. Then he noticed the man’s feet were bleeding profusely. Jack identified several deep lacerations in the man’s foot and avulsion (skin pulled apart from the body) but no structural damage.

At the man’s truck bed, Jack and his friends helped clean the wound and wrap his foot in gauze. The supplies, of course, came from the group that came for the birthday party. A-Grade prep, no notes.

After turning down Jack’s request to drive him to the hospital, the wind surfer packed up his gear, loaded his truck and drove off. 

“He obviously still had adrenaline going but he’s one tough dude,” Jack said. “And not as freaked out as I would have been.”