Large Shark Eats Turtle, Clears Rockies Lineup

It has been a slow season on Oahu’s North Shore.

Blame La Niña. The Pacific jet stream is too far up, they say, before ditching the atmospheric jargon and speaking in more familiar terms such as the swells have been too north and the wind fucking sucks. As a result, Pipe has been mostly dormant. Many days have been complete write-offs surf wise and the ceaseless stream of professional surfers playing golf at Turtle Bay continues to be the worst wave in surfing.

We needed something to snap us out of this funk of boredom. And yesterday, finally, something exciting happened: a large shark appeared at Rocky Point, ate a turtle, and cleared the lineup. Hole in one!  

Parker Coffin was there, taking it all in. Here’s his firsthand account.

What happened?
I was surfing Rockies Right and I’d just caught a wave, so I was sitting in the lineup looking down towards Pipe. This turtle popped up next to me and it was giant, so I was checking it out. All of the sudden, I see a big splash a couple feet away. Then I see a side profile of this shark going up and chomping the turtle. The shark trashed the turtle around for a second then chomped it again so hard. I could fully hear the sound. This was no more than 20 feet away.

So what’d you do?
At first, I was in complete shock. But once I realized what I saw I started paddling in as hard as I could. There were a few guys out a little deeper than me and I started yelling at them but I wasn’t making any sense so they just looked at me like I was a crazy person. I missed the first little wave to come in on and I was tripping — it felt like forever until the next one. It can be tricky to get in at Rocky Rights, but I just charged it and dry-docked myself. Luckily, the other guys out there figured it out and came in too.

Did you surf again yesterday after that?
No, I was pretty spooked. I was so lucky that the turtle was there so it wasn’t me. I kind of celebrated, had a cocktail and enjoyed my life because I was still living [laughs].

Was that the first shark you’ve ever seen?
I actually saw my first one with Conner at Cloudbreak earlier this year. It was pretty scary, but it seemed like it was just cruising the channel and wasn’t that big. This one was much bigger. It easily looked bigger than 10-feet. It was the most radical thing I’ve ever seen.

Do you think Mick Fanning would have punched its face?
100%. He would have seen me in distress, paddled out and wrestled it. That shark would have been bummed if Mick was out.