Surfer Who Was Attacked By Wild Boar Reveals Long List Of Disturbing Sea Encounters

Do you remember last Hawaiian winter, maybe mid-December, when a woman was “attacked by a wild boar” while surfing off Oahu?

At the time, we were filming for Stab and Vans The Pick-Up series, and we couldn’t help but include this very strange yet compelling story in our weekly news segment. Tosh Tudor’s inability to pronounce, let alone comprehend, the title of the piece led to one of the best blooper reels in Stab’s history.

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Recently, the woman involved in the incident, Ingrid Seiple, told her story to The Guardian in greater detail, explaining how the whole thing went down, why the pig was 200 meters out to sea, and what caused it to be so rabid.

An excerpt:

I began surfing the waves, then saw something floating towards me. I wondered if it was a seal, but it looked stiff. Suddenly, it lifted its head out of the water. I was eye to eye with a wild boar, only 1.5 metres from me. It was shocked – and so was I. It had a bloody face as if it had been attacked, the longest snout, with tusks like a baby mastodon, and a look of desperation. I was afraid and, more than that, surprised. What was it doing here?

It started piggy-paddling towards me with all its might. I turned to paddle away, but its face was at my foot. I got off my board and placed it between us as a safety barrier. The pig pulled itself up and took a chunk out of the board with its teeth. I swam underwater in the other direction, and when I surfaced 3 metres away I realised it had broken through the fibreglass casing of the board and crunched through the foam. There was a giant bite mark. That could have been me.

The last I saw of the boar was it swimming out to sea, but I still needed to get out of the water because the blood from its face could invite a feeding frenzy from bigger animals. I paddled to the beach, where I discovered its tracks alongside those of hunting dogs. It looked as though it had been chased out into the ocean. My friend said it was the only time he’d seen me scared.

Ingrid proceeded to explain that this was not her most frightening ocean encounter. In fact, over the course of her life, Ingrid’s dealt with a surprisingly vast array of violent sea critters.

“Three years ago, while swimming off Namotu Island in Fiji, I was stung by an Irukandji jellyfish,” she explained. “This is among the deadliest creatures in the ocean, with venom 100 times stronger than a cobra. I had to pull its tentacles off my face and was taken to hospital by helicopter. In 2000, I was stung by a stingray in Mexico, and in 2002 I dodged a venomous sea snake in Costa Rica.”

Some people have all the luck.