Shark joins fisherman inside his boat

An Australian fisherman caught a far bigger fish than he hoped for when a 2.7m-long great white shark leapt into his boat, knocking him off his feet.

Terry Selwood, 73, was left with a badly bruised and bleeding right arm where the shark struck him with a pectoral fin as it landed on him on the deck of the 4.5m-long power boat off Evans Head, 450 miles north of Sydney.

Mr Selwood jumped up on the gunnel at the bow of the boat to avoid the thrashing shark and steadied himself by clinging to the tubular metal frame of the sun shelter.

Mr Selwood used a handheld radio to call the Evans Head coast guard.

Coast guard skipper Bill Bates said he misread the danger when Mr Selwood reported his predicament.

“He said, ‘I’m injured, I’ve broken my arm, I’ve got lacerations and there’s a shark in my boat’,” Mr Bates said.

“Often a fisherman will bring a small shark on board, maybe two or three feet, and they’re still ferocious. That’s what I

0 The shark took up most of the deck area of Terry Selwood’s 4.5m-long power boat when it flipped over the side was expecting, but I was totally wrong.”

The coast guard crew rescued Mr Selwood, but left the shark – estimated to weigh 200kg – well alone.

“The shark was thrashing inside the boat … there was no way you’d put a foot in there,” Mr Bates said.

The coast guard took Mr Selwood to paramedics at Evans Head to be checked over and towed his boat – with the shark – into harbour.

“We think it was already dead at that stage, but no-one was game to put their finger in to find out,” Mr Bates said.

Mr Selwood said he was tending two hand lines off the port and starboard sides of the boat, when he saw one of the lines move as if a fish was hooked.

“I touched the hand line and I just caught a blur coming in the corner of me eye and just out of instinct,” he said.

“I threw me right arm up and this thing hit me in the forearm and spun me around and knocked me off me feet.

“This thing was beside me and I looked over and thought, ‘Oh, a bloody shark’.

“So I just climbed, he was doing a mad dance around, he was thrashing everywhere,” he added.