When Anton Oleinik swam out to go spearfishing at Ti Point, just north of Auckland, he didn’t expect that he’d end up in the fight of his life.
According to the New Zealand Herald, it was around 8 a.m. on December 9 when he ran into a large school of kingfish, a species of mackerel. He fired at one, hit his target, and began kicking for the surface. It was at that moment, he felt something hit his leg.
“I shot one and got tangled in the fight to pull him in,” he explained. “The rope wrapped around me. I was trying to untangle it when I popped my head above the water to take a breath. All of a sudden, I felt a squeeze on my knee. I thought it must have been a strong kingfish but when I put my head down, there was a big shark with his jaws around my leg.”
The shark, according to reports, was a bronze whaler about eight feet long. Although bronze whalers aren’t generally thought of as particularly dangerous to humans—the International Shark Attack File lists 14 non-fatal attacks and one fatal attack over the entire course of their research—they are, like most sharks, capable of inflicting serious damage. Due to the strength of the jaw and the morphology of the teeth, even a test-bite can be fatal if it lands in the wrong place.
Oleinik, fearing the worst, scrambled for shore. “I pushed him off,” he continued, “left my gear and swam back to the rocks about 10m away. I didn’t realize the camera was still rolling. I sat on the rocks for five to 10 minutes to catch my breath, then I realized I had to swim back for my gear. It was very scary.”
Despite the size of the shark, Oleinick came away physically unharmed. “I was lucky he got me on the knee pad with three layers of neoprene,” he said, “so there was no harm to my leg.”
