Man Loses Arm Wrestle with Shark
And what do we have here? Ahah!
Flying too close to the sun we got Bruce Brauteseth out off Scottburgh south coast KZN South Africa losing an arm wrestling match with an unruly blacktip shark recently.
The two metre shark was going for a the rudimentary free lunch and Bruce was having none of it. The argument got really heated and the blacktip pulled out his razor sharp teeth and gave it to Bruce in the forearm – twice. Well, twin puncture wounds unmistakably from a tax collector gone mad. Got to fill your tax returns in Bruce! Or change your number or something!
The damage was superficial and Bruce is already back in the water looking for another blacktip to pick a fight with!
Here’s the Story from the man himself below…
Hey Guys, so some details of my incident recently. I was boat diving with 2 mates and quickly into our second drift I shot and landed a fish.
While swimming back to the boat (which was drifting pretty fast) and before I could get to it, I came across a bait ball with loads of fish and shark action on it. As my dive buddies were close to the boat which was further from me at this stage, I decided I’d slow my drift and try hang around the bait ball for longer to get another fish and wait for them to track back and pick me up.
So I sorted out the first fish getting it off my shooting line, reloaded my gun, put the first fish on my spear tip (through the mouth) as you do when you’ve got a long swim back to the boat. Long story short, loads of sharks and smaller fish had been smashing the bait and initially nothing exciting to shoot.
Eventually some quality Fulvies appeared (Kingfish/trevally), so having no better options I decided to take one. Unfortunately I didn’t stone it (on account of having a big barracuda weighing my spear tip down.) But a decent enough shot none the less.
As you know, Fulvies make alot of noise if not turned off immediately (grunting sounds). Because of the noisy struggling fish and some already frisky blacktip sharks which were already all fired up, I decided to make quick work of landing the fulvie.
Usually I don’t have too much of a hassle with the blacktip sharks around Scotties but they’ve definitely got alot more aggressive and have zero fear of spearos. Anyway I was doing a good job landing the fulvie and keeping the blacktips off, until another element was added!
All of a sudden, I saw out the corner of my eye a massive Potato bass (large spotted grouper) come flying in from the bottom, exploding for the surface to try and take one of my fish. Usually the Potato’s won’t hassle me that deep and if they do come out, they hang close mid water but this guy meant business!
If the sharks had got too hectic, I would have just let them eat the fish however now with a Potato bass in the mix, the risk was raised exponentially because they are known to grab fish and swim down not always removing the fish from the spear thus posing the risk of dragging me down if I got tangled in my line, which was all over the place because of the two fish!
Because of that, I couldn’t let him take a fish and I just had to make sure I stayed out of my gun line and kept him from grabbing one . So I prioritised my focus more on him than the sharks and gave him a good number of jabs with the barrel of my unloaded gun.
I couldn’t believe how flippen persistent he was, he just kept coming, and right to the surface, It was flippen hectic!!! Anyway, the blacktips obviously just keep coming too, but I was more worried about the Potato bass.
I’ll say it again, if it was just sharks, I would have let them take the fish. Because they’ll remove the fish from the spear and less risk of me getting tangled in lines. I couldn’t risk getting tangled. During all the commotion I did get bitten by a blacktip unfortunately.
He was definitely not trying to attack me, he wanted the fish and I got in the way fending off the Potato bass. Saying that though, after the Potato bass lost interest, the blacktip just wouldn’t (about a 2m blacktip shark) leave me alone, he kept coming at me!!!
Even when the boat arrived, he still wouldn’t leave me. Only when one of my dive buddies jumped in to help, did he finally lose interest and allow me to get back on the boat.
Wowsers Bruce! Close shave there however we are all glad you are okay and still kicking! Brass ball’s to say the least and keeping a level head with zero panic definitely saved the day!!!
As always dive safe and straight spears from the Bear
