This past Sunday, lifeguard Achmat Hassiem and his brother Taariq were participating in training exercises in the waters off South Africa. When Achmat saw a shark fin slice through the water and head for his brother, he alerted him and then did the unthinkable -- he splashed the water in an effort to attract the shark in his direction! The shark immediately made a beeline for Achmat, grabbed him by his right ankle, and pulled him underwater. Achmat was rescued by Taariq and other lifeguards, but he lost his right foot as a result of the attack.
For the sick-o's out there, Achmat describes the experience like this: "You don't feel pain. It had my leg in its mouth but I did not feel pain. It was just, I don't know, just this brute power, this massive brute force against me, against nothing." Amazingly, Achmat plans to return to lifeguarding, although he will have to re-learn how to swim -- without his right foot.
Although South Africa has implemented a shark-spotting program in many of its beaches, the program has not extended to the area where this particular attack occurred, due to a lack of high vantage points from which spotters can sight sharks. Arguing that overfishing has led to depleting fish stocks, Paul Botha claims sharks are switching from fish to humans to sustain themselves (think: Recife). As a result, some people -- like Botha -- are calling for the selective culling of great whites. Botha claims that if sharks are smart as the "environmental zealots argue, they will go away if we start culling them." Not surprisingly, many others think his call to cull is a ridiculous idea.
[Shark attack, via Newsvine. Shark culling, via Scubafriends.]
1. I didn’t do a full out search for this and help me out anyone if you know the answer but I could not find what type of shark was responsible for the attack. I find this a bit unfair that they are immediately blaming Great Whites and on top of that calling for selective killing of this species of shark. Very little s known about White Sharks and what is least known of all is how they breed and how fast they reproduce. It seams a little dangerous to kill an animal that is already under vast anthropogenic stress without knowing if it can take anymore encroachment on its life style with out going extinct. It is sad that this surfer is so intent on his policy of human’s first sharks second, sharks don’t come onto the land to our world it is we who venture into theirs and yet they are the ones who should stop. Paul Botha may enjoy the ocean but to me it seams that the only thing he cares about it, is where can he catch the next big wave.
Posted at 3:46PM on Aug 15th 2006 by marclyng