‘He’s picking out which
Below the Surface is a Stuff series by Hamish McNeilly about five shark attacks in the 1960s and early 70s off the coast of Dunedin. Three men were killed and two more seriously injured, devastating families, traumatising survivors, and sparking hysteria
‘Here it is again,’’ Les Jordan warns as the shark’s dorsal fin and tail breaks through the water. His rescuer, Ian Graham, sees the large shark swim around the surfboard.
All around them is Jordan’s blood.
Graham is later joined by fellow surfer Sandy McDowell, as they put the now unconscious Jordan across their paddleboards.
The journey back to the safety of St Clair Beach takes an eternity, with the pair unable to fully paddle for fear of losing a limb to the ever present shark.
Thrown onto the sand, Graham immediately gives Jordan CPR, before being replaced by McDowell.
As McDowell looks at the pale teen he is shocked to see Jordan’s right leg, below the knee, is gone.
There is froth about his mouth and nose.
Others, including a doctor, rush to help Jordan.
He is taken to Dunedin Hospital by ambulance but is pronounced dead.
TASTE OF BLOOD
It was the summer of ’64. NZ was prospering, the arrival of TV was transforming popular culture, the Beatles tour was imminent and She’s a Mod was about to become a crossTasman sensation.
But the upbeat optimism of 1960s NZ was about to be punctured by the news that a teenage swimmer had bled to death on a New Zealand beach. It soon makes waves around the country.
Shark Kills Dunedin Student is the headline in that night’s Evening Post, with other reports noting it was possibly the most southern fatal shark attack in the world.
‘‘Once he’s attacked one person, he’ll be back. Keep out of the water,’’ one Port Chalmers fisherman warned reporters of the great white shark.
‘‘When they get the taste of blood they will wait for more and they lurk, usually just outside the breakers’’.
Until the Jordan attack, there had been only four recorded fatal shark attacks in New Zealand; in Wellington (1852), Napier and Kumara (both 1896) and the most recent one more than half a century earlier at the Otago community of Moeraki (1907). But in the 1960s five people would die from shark attacks, including three young men off Dunedin’s coast, sparking hysteria on land and in the water.
The attacks led to Dunedin becoming the only city to install shark nets at its beaches, leading to a war of words over their effectiveness.
And, after two non-fatal attacks, the Dunedin encounters with great whites suddenly stopped by 1971.
Some shark experts now believe the Dunedin incidents are the work of a ‘‘rogue’’ shark, which exhibited a different, more aggressive, pattern of hunting.
New research is set to reveal the ecologically-rich Otago waters as a hotbed mating area for great whites.
‘‘You effectively have dinner and a movie,’’ said Steve Crawford, a Canadian researcher who has conducted more than 70 interviews on great white behaviour in the deep south.
‘‘That’s where the big male sharks and big females are getting it on.’’
Reports of five-metre-long sharks lurking in areas such as Otago Harbour were not uncommon, while some locals still speak breathlessly about a 6m great white shark – dubbed KZ7 after the America’s Cup yacht – which patrolled the waters off Otago for decades.
The families and survivors of the Dunedin attacks acknowledge that the ocean is the shark’s domain, not theirs.
And while many of those have not returned to the water, survivor Barry Watkins continues to surf, albeit in the North Island.
Yet he continues to be haunted by the large shark that came out of nowhere to attack him, as a then teenage surfer.
‘‘I remembered the eyes . . . these huge bloody eyes.’’
CLEAR THE BEACH
A fortnight before Les Jordan’s death, his brother Maurice was on patrol at St Clair when he spotted a large shark.
Clearing the beach, he later contacted the local newspaper but was told ‘‘sharks don’t swim in that cold water’’.