I foil with Junebug and have had my share of fish encounters. Broken 2 foils wings hitting rays that i saw in the water right before I hit them and have been randomly ejected numerous times running into other mysterious fish I didn’t see, some which I assume were sharks.
I was foiling one time on back of breaking waves outside detached sandbars from the beach and was ejected and didn’t give it much thought till back on the beach I saw bite marks on top and bottom of my fuselage. I assume in the murky turbulent water a lurking shark instinctively went after the foil thinking it was a ray or fish.
Kited with Stephen Schafer in Stuart Fl day before he died of the shark bite sadly.
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Loved that GreenTurtle post of the
Bullshark getting it right down the gullet. I hope Spiro ate it and I hope it was nice and tender. Holy Shizzx I am never ever kiting East Coast. That thing makes a big whopping GW Shark look docile. No apologies to any Shark Huggers out there either. This is war, I need every single appendage and don't want them bitten off. I'm with Kelley on this one. That thing was pure evil, it would have killed Spiro for sure.
Right, I'm off to have a nice big bowl of shark fin soup now, tata!
I could contact them or through contacts who work with them currently. Have to confess, I have religiously missed shark week since it has been around. I have reposted two or three short clips through the years though but that is about it. What we need is more information from kiters and now wingers about interactions with detailed information about what happened. So, keep posting your experiences on here. That information along with apparent trends, if any, will likely give us a lot more meaningful info than the Discovery Channel I suspect. All they could do would be to interview some of us, talk to some shark experts who may not kite, have no first hand knowledge of board/foil interactions and conjecture on what is going on. Some kiting grad students might structure a study about foil/mast interactions if they could line up some Doc's to get onboard. Not sure where funding would come from but the grad students might be interested.
I like to shoot sharks when I kite too. Unfortunately, I am not winging or hydrofoiling with a kite that much particularly now during our off wind season. I also like to dive with and shoot sharks when I can. The UW shots are from about a week ago off Jupiter.
So, Rick I, you have the most clout on safety I know of, any way to contact Discovery Channel for next year's Shark Week where they can do a show on foils and sharks? They do the research over the fall/winter and prep the show for next year's SHARK! week. Then again, do we really want to know if sharks are attracted to foils? I've seen some of that from the kite or lines footage where sharks dart over towards foils then dark away in a curious sort of way, but bulls and tigers are more, "bit first, decide if I like it later" kinda fish.
I live in Stuart Florida and kite all the time. There are TONS of sharks here. I have many gopro shots just like Rick's with sharks nearby while kiting. People shark fish here and catch lots of lemons, spinners, blacktips, bulls, hammerheads, and tigers right from the beach.
Several times I have jumped and had to change my landing zone because there was a big shark right in it!
I do not think they are attracted to foils, I foil regularly (kite and surf-foil) and ride over them and they just scatter scared.
Clear water is a definite benefit to preventing an attack but I always have a tourniquet in my boardshorts in case I fall on a bull or tiger!
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RadDrDukethe bottom shot is from Bathtub which you probably recognize. It is about a mile south from where poor Steve was hit. Stuart and points north certainly are sharky. Thanks for your impressions about foil-shark interactions.
Cyrus,
Thanks for sharing your story. I am so glad you were able to make it back to shore safely.
After reading your story, I ordered a R.A.T.S. Tourniquet to bring with me into the water:
Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t10R1qPRftU
Instructional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upEgTfrtYGg
You obviously did the right thing by getting to shore as quickly as possible. I have heard that some Bull Sharks will follow the blood trail and continue biting all the way to shore.