Stunned Aussie fisherman fights off shark stealing his tuna: 'I s**t myself'
Watch the shark follow the spear fisherman right up to his boat after taking a huge chunk out of the tuna.
A Victorian fisherman was stunned after wrestling his freshly caught tuna away from a shark in a dramatic moment captured on film.
Moments earlier, Gil Pauline, 32, his fiancée and pet dog launched their 3.7-metre tinny 10km out into Port Phillip Bay, off Queenscliff.
It was a warm January morning and a school of fish was rippling on the surface. Gil grabbed his speargun and jumped into the water. “I was surrounded by 30 or 40 tuna and I picked out a nice sized eating one that was about 30kg,” he told Yahoo News Australia. “I just shot it and then the fight was on.”
After tussling with the tuna for an hour in the water, Gil managed to pull the fish in closer and that’s when he first saw a shark stalking his catch. Earlier, he’d suspected a shark was close after seeing the tuna change its behaviour.
Thinking he was being stalked by a great white, Gil jumped into the boat. “I fully s**t myself because I was in the water by myself,” he said. “I was pretty speechless, high on adrenaline.”
Video reveals desperate swim to escape shark
Video shared to his Life Adrift YouTube account last week shows Gil swimming back towards his boat to safety. His dog can be seen watching the situation unfold from the bow. Once Gil was on board the shark could be seen coming right up to the boat. “The shark was pretty aggressively swimming around the boat and had taken a few bites out of (the tuna)," he said.
Once he was out of the water, Gil identified the animal a sevengill shark, an opportunistic scavenger and predator that rarely attacks humans.
Gil says he was happy to share part of his catch with the shark but also saved some for himself. “We ate it for probably the next week, I think twice a day," he said. "We gave some pieces away to young families by the boat ramp.”
“I’ve seen a lot of sharks before,” he said. “It’s their environment and I sort of respect them. This (encounter) has given me even more appreciation for them,” he said.
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