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About four kilometres off Victoria’s coastline, Oscar Ford became trapped in a battle with a powerful predator.
The 25-year-old carpenter was fishing with his younger cousins off Thirteenth Beach, near Barwon Heads, on Sunday afternoon, when he felt the force of an animal so strong, his cousins’ response was immediate: “Get the GoPro”, and “holy shit”.
A massive splash exploded around their balloon in the water, and a 35-minute fight ensued as the boys drove after the shark; Ford attempting to reel the animal in, while it dove deep alongside his grandfather’s boat.
They all thought it was a mako shark, when the 25-year-old suddenly saw the creature’s white belly and distinctive grey colour, “like a submarine gliding through the water”. It was a two-metre great white.
“I’ve hooked a white,” Ford screamed, yelling and whooping while working to heave in the animal.
His excited 10-year-old cousin, Maxwell Fox, asked, “Do I call Chockers?“, referring to a friend of Ford’s. The 25-year-old answered: “Nah, it’s alright.
“This is going on the news, mate.”
Oscar Ford with the great white shark, caught off Barwon Heads.Credit: Oscar Ford
Ford captured the shark biting their boat on video and swimming alongside it, before he released the animal without pulling it aboard – knowing full well that the sharks are a protected species.
On Tuesday, the 25-year-old was back on board, where he spoke to The Age, on the boys’ fourth consecutive day of fishing. “[The shark] went really hard. I’m lucky it was only a small one. Otherwise, I would never have even got it close to the boat,” Ford said.
“We all watched it on the telly, and watched all the footage. It was pretty cool.”
The Ocean Grove carpenter’s catch is one of four Victorian shark sightings reported this month via the crowdsourcing shark alert app, Dorsal.
Two back-to-back sightings were reported this week at Portsea Beach on the Mornington Peninsula: one, a 2.5-metre white shark about 150 metres offshore on Sunday afternoon, and the second, on Monday morning, about 50 metres from the shoreline.
A four-metre white shark was reportedly spotted off Lorne Pier near the Great Ocean Road by fisherman Steven Cauchi on December 23, about 50 metres from shore. “I think I need a bigger rod,” Cauchi wrote on social media when sharing a video of the creature.
The Victorian Fisheries Authority, which is responsible for alerting swimmers to sharks threatening their safety, has not detected any dangerous animals warranting a warning so far this summer.
To meet their warning threshold, sharks have to be at least three metres long and either a great white, tiger or bull shark.
Travis Dowling, the authority’s chief executive, said incidental catches of great white sharks were more common this time of year, as schools of salmon and other bait fish moved around Australia.
“It’s not unusual for this time of year, with so many Victorians at the beach, for there to be an increase in shark sightings,” Dowling said.
“Most people are doing absolutely the right thing, and when they are inadvertently or accidentally hooking a white shark, they are taking care to ensure that shark is released unarmed, which is great.”
Victoria has not had a fatal shark attack in more than 35 years.
A number of tagged great white sharks lived around the heads of Port Phillip Bay, which otherwise has a strong gummy and mako shark population.
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