‘He’s picking out which one he’s going to go for’
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’’.
‘‘No-one took any notice of him,’’ says their brother Alan. Alan Jordan, who now lives in Tauranga, said he often thinks about that close encounter and what might have been.
But one person who doesn’t think that much about the attack is Ian Graham. ‘‘It was a bit of history.’’
However, talking about what unfolded at St Clair beach on February 5, 1964, was still traumatic for the retired Christchurch man.
He can still see the black eye of the 3.5m shark as it swam alongside his paddle board – a larger type surfboard used for surfing – with the injured 19-year-old slung across it.
‘‘He was a little bit on his side looking up at me and I thought, ‘Jesus, he is picking out which one he is going to go for’.’’
The then 26-year-old was in Dunedin for work and took the opportunity for an early morning surf at St Clair.
Both he and Sandy McDowell, 19, were lifeguards at Waimairi Surf Life Saving Club in Christchurch and were confident in the water.
Graham was about to follow McDowell and head out of the water when he heard Jordan, also a young lifeguard, call for help about 50m away.
‘‘I thought he had cramp or some similar trouble and went to his assistance,’’ Graham told authorities after the attack. Graham told Stuff he paddled over to the 19-year-old who told him a ‘‘shark has got me’’.
‘‘And I remember it clearly, ‘don’t be bloody silly there are no sharks out here’.’’
Jordan showed him his leg.
It was missing a piece between the knee and the hip.
‘‘There was a lot of blood in the water.’’
He helped the injured teen onto the board, with Jordan warning ‘‘here it is again’’.
Graham was shocked to see, ‘‘This bloody great big shark, which seemed to be huge, was coming around again’’.
The shark was just an arm’s length away, as Graham tried to paddle the pair towards shore – about 250m away.
‘‘With the extra weight on the board we didn’t want to be tipped off, we were being very cautious.’’
Graham alerted McDowell, who had just left the water.
‘‘I think they are in trouble,’’ Alan Jordan – Leslie’s father, who was watching the drama unfold, told McDowell.
He was right.
Reading Graham’s gestures correctly, McDowell took his board rather than swim towards the pair.
The pair put their boards together to support the now unconscious man.
McDowell tried to describe Jordan’s injury but Graham urged him to ‘‘shut-up and just paddle’’ and the two paddled for shore.
McDowell, who now lives in Australia, saw the shark swim about a foot under their boards and then behind them as they desperately tried to paddle Jordan to shore.
‘‘During our journey back to the beach it was most difficult, as we were taking short strokes to keep our hands from the water as much as possible when the shark came near.’’
Less than 30 metres from the shore, he saw the shark ‘‘on top of the water and heading straight for us and it again passed under the boards and it was then a wave broke and threw us onto the sand.’’.
Graham recalled giving Jordan CPR on the beach and when he stopped to let McDowell take over he was shocked to see the extent of the injuries.
He believed the shark took the rest of Jordan’s leg when he warned ‘‘here it is again’’.
A doctor, Stuart Ballantyne, arrived at the scene at 7.45am and spotted an ambulance officer and surf club members trying to resuscitate Jordan.
He examined Jordan but found no pulse or heartbeat.
‘‘There was froth about the mouth and nostrils.
‘‘The pupils were dilated and did not react to light.’’
He continued to work on Jordan’s heart and in the ambulance on the way to Dunedin Hospital, ‘‘at no time did I find any sign of life’’.
That night pathologist Eric D’Ath examined Jordan’s body, noting he was a ‘‘well built, muscular young man’’.
However, his organs and tissue were pale from a loss of blood.
The shark attack ‘‘completely amputated the right leg through the knee joint’’.
Next to that gaping wound was a mark of four teeth, while a large wound on his other leg was possibly made from a fin.
D’Ath concluded that Jordan became unconscious ‘‘from loss of blood and shock while being brought in and, in this state, inhaled a quantity of water’’.
He ruled the death was caused by asphyxia.
THE SHARKS’ DOMAIN
Alan Jordan was just 16 when his visibly upset father rushed into their St Clair home, just two blocks from the beach, and cried, ‘Les has had his leg taken off by a shark’.
‘‘And that was it, and we raced to the hospital.’’
His brother was studying law and was heavily involved with the St Clair Surf Life Saving Club
But after the attack the family ended their involvement with the club.
Les’ death was particularly hard on their father, who was the club’s president and used to judge national competitions.
‘‘That was our life, back then . . . it wiped us away from it.’’
His father also stopped going for his daily swim in the sea and barely dipped his toes in the water again.
He stopped entering the water after Bill Black’s attack a few years later.
Jordan’s mother always regarded the sea as ‘‘the sharks’ domain’’.
The attack brought sharks into the public consciousness because before that ‘‘it wasn’t really thought of’’.
‘‘We didn’t take too much notice until Les and still we thought it was out of the blue . . . but we never expected the others to happen.’’
One positive from the tragedy was getting to know his brother’s rescuers, with Graham and McDowell asked to be pallbearers at Les’ funeral.
Graham, who along with McDowell won the George Medal for their rescue efforts, was honoured to be asked.
‘‘It was that intimate moment, we felt that we knew him really well.
‘‘It was quite an honour and a privilege to be asked to be a pallbearer.’’
They are modest about their efforts.
‘‘We did what we had to do. ‘‘There was nothing we could have done differently.
Graham didn’t consciously think about the incident every time he went back in the water and acknowledged that ‘‘you are literally invading their territory’’.
‘‘You feel it is the luck of the draw, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . those things can occur.’’