Shark’s tale with happy ending

It’s the stuff of horror movies. A lone swimmer comes to the surface and finds his boat is missing and he is left stranded miles from safety – then to make matters worse, he discovers he is being followed by a killer shark.

However, this is no film script – it actually happended to Wearside exile John Craig.

John, who moved to the aptly-named Shark Bay, in Western Australia, from Washington two years ago, has been telling how he swam four-and-a-half miles for his life with a four-metre tiger shark on his tail.

He said: “It was easily the biggest tiger shark I’ve been in the water with and that’s saying something, having worked as a dive instructor for over 10 years.”

John watched in dread as the tiger shark circled him and kept approaching from different angles.

He used a speargun to block the killer’s path before deciding his only option was a long swim back to shore.

But his ordeal hadn’t ended there, the creature started following him.

John said “I have to admit that at this point I thought I was gone – four nautical miles out to sea with a huge tiger shark following me – I thought this was it, this is how I’m going to die.”

But, amazingly, as he kept swimming, the shark started crusing beside him and then parted company a few hundred yards from the beach.

An exhausted John made it to shore and then had an anxious wait until he was rescued.

Feeling none the worse for his ordeal, the SAFC fan even quipped: “This was the worst thing I’ve experienced since the 1998 play-off final against Charlton.”

John’s amazing tale has been followed all around the globe and the Mackem Jaws story is certainly one to tell his grandkids.