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- EAST LONDON, South
Africa (Reuters) - A backpacker filming surfers on South Africa"s
east coast captured another sort of adventure story this week -- rare footage
of a Great White shark attack. A video recording of the incident, considered
by shark experts to be unique, shows a second shark also lining up to attack
15-year-old Shannon Ainslie, a surfer from East London. Ainslie was surfing
with his brother and friends Monday when he came face to face with one
of the world"s most ferocious killers.
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- "I was just catching a wave when the shark came
up and made a grab for me. Next thing I knew I was under water and came
face to face with the shark," he told Reuters. "I looked straight
into its eyes and thought I was dreaming." Ainslie escaped with a
severely injured right hand, almost losing a middle finger that hung by
just a thread. "I was in a state of shock and just prayed to God to
let me live," he said.
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- His ordeal was caught on film by Canadian backpacker
Sean Smith, who just happened to be videotaping the surfers. Perhaps the
first film of a shark attack on a surfer, the tape is brief but stunning.
In seconds, Ainslie is thrown from his board as the 13-ft shark attacks
from the left. A dorsal fin can be seen towering the wave as the shark"s
jaws clamp the back of the board and drag it under the water.
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- The second shark is clearly silhouetted against a breaking
wave moving in from the right toward the surfboard, but it drops away at
the last moment. "I am very, very surprised to hear that there was
a second shark there. It is very unusual for Great Whites to hunt in pairs.
They don"t hunt together, they only hunt alone," said Willie
Maritz, the chief of marine services in East London. "It"s (the
tape"s) scientific value is enormous," he told Reuters. Maritz
said sharks often attack surfboards because they mistake them for seals,
sea turtles or large fish. "It was probably just tasting and decided
it was something it couldn"t eat because it immediately swam away,"
he said.
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- There have been three fatalities over the past five years
from shark attacks in the East London area. Maritz said July was the most
dangerous month for surfing off East London when Great Whites and other
sharks followed migrating schools of sardines north before returning to
the seal colonies off the Cape.
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