Large Shark Scares CT Surfers Out of The Water The Night Before The Big Event

We all know West Oz is a shark haven. It breeds the big boys, on par with those of South Africa and the Pacific Northwest. White, bull and tiger sharks are among the five species that call WA’s waters home. Just last night, at roughly 6pm, a slew of CT surfers were scared out of the water by, well, you know. At the time, Kanoa Igarashi, Jeremy Flores, Caio Ibelli, Alessa Quizon, Wiggolly Dantas and the Roman injury replacement, Leo Fioravanti, were the only cats in the lineup.

“We were in the water about ten minutes before dark which is a really bad idea,” Kanoa tells Stab. “Wiggolly, Jeremy and Leo were out the back and they were looking in at us for some reason.”

“In the corner of my eye I saw this splash, and thought, oh, must be a couple dolphins,” Mr Igarashi continues. “I looked over at Caio and he raised his eyes, like, hmm that was a bit weird. We saw its fin emerge from the water, it looked like a submarine. Then the fin kept growing it ended up being like two or three feet out of the water. Then another fin appeared. I looked over and was thinking, wow, there’s a dolphin next to the shark. But it was just the shark’s tail. It was seven/eight feet away from the main fin. Then it shot down and I looked over at Caio and he had the most scared face I’ve ever seen. No one said a word and the guys outside saw our faces and knew we saw a shark. We bolted in as fast as we could and caught a wave. We were bumping rails rode it in all the way onto the rocks. Leo didn’t catch the wave, he was stuck out there and got the next one. We were freaking out as we made it to the beach. Wiggolly’s brother said he saw the shark a half hour before and was trying to whistle for us to come in but we couldn’t hear him.”

That Modom shark leash seems to be a good call prior to events in notoriously sharky regions. With plans rumoured to offer them for use at J-Bay, they might as well jump the gun for Margarets. But, that’s assuming they’ve got a stock-pile ready to shell out. The WSL has shark monitoring skis in place for the event, and we all know they don’t want to see another Mick Fanning incident (nor do we). However, it did do wonders for their ratings… cue an unscripted hashtag, or something…