To paraphrase 'Glass Onion': You heard about the walrus and me man, well here's another shark surprise.Mr Heron said he was surfing about 40m offshore at Fishery Bay, 30km south of Port Lincoln, about 3pm CST (1530 AEST) yesterday when attacked by the shark.So just like 'Jaws', this news has seemingly spawned a sequel. As they said in the movie, cry shark and everybody does take notice. Are more Great White Sharks choosing to attack humans? Let's have a think.
"I had just caught a wave, was heading back out," the father of two said.
"I thought I was actually all right at first but it (the shark) just started rising out of the water.
"I just looked around and saw a big black body ... and then I felt the bite so I knew I had been bitten.
"What happened after that happened really quickly.
"I think what has happened is that the shark has, with the next bite, grabbed my board and as it did that I went along the side of it and I was just punching and kicking it.
"Then my board took off, it had my board and was under water and I got dragged for a bit.
"The board popped up, I swum over to the board, that was the worst; I had about 10 yards to swim and a wave came along, perfect timing, straight over the rocks and in."
Mr Heron said the swim to retrieve his broken board was frightening.
"I don't think the shock factor kicked in too much, I sort of got my head around it," he said.
"But I thought I knew what I had to do, I had to get in and my board was there and that was all that was sort of going through my mind at that time.
"The worst thing was the swim.
"I just had to go from here to the door ... and that was the worst bit because if I was ever going to get hit again, that is when it was going to happen."
Mr Heron said he sustained puncture wounds to a leg and arm in the attack.
At the time the professional crayfisherman was celebrating Father's Day by surfing his friend Craig Materna.
Mr Matena, who was riding a board near his friend when the shark attacked, said Mr Heron gave the great white several heavy punches.
"It knocked him off and then it bit his board and pulled him under. Jake was just punching the shark, I think in the gills."
The shark chomped on his surfboard, splitting it in two before resuming the attack. "He was just yelling out, 'Help, help'," Mr Matena said.
"He was lucky a large wave then came through and washed him to rocks. That's what saved him."
Mr Heron's two children, a six-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy, who were playing on the rocks nearby, looked on in horror as their father struggled with the big shark.
He ran up the beach, yelling and holding his leg as he struggled to his car.
Wrapping towels around his wounds, Mr Heron's friends took him to Tulka, a nearby town, where they met an ambulance.
Meanwhile, suggestions that Port Lincoln's burgeoning tuna farming industry were luring more sharks to the area have been dismissed by the Tuna Boat Association.
Association chairman Brian Jeffries said great whites had been in waters near Port Lincoln for 100 years, and yesterday's attack was the first since tuna farming began in the region more than a decade ago.
It was the second shark attack in South Australia within two weeks, and the third since December.
Okay, sample size police says that shark attacks are going to be more likely as humans and Great White Sharks find common grounds of operation in greater occurrences. So is there a growing trend here? I don't know. 2 attacks in 2 weeks may simply be statistical clustering. It's hard to say. Yet, if more people keep getting attacked by Great White Shark's it's likely somebody might want to do *something* about it.
Whatever the case, it seems to me swimming in the waters off the coast of SA is like asking to get bit. Do it enough times, something is going to have a bite at you.
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