A California surfer came face to face with a 10-foot shark when the beast knocked him off his board during a terrifying encounter that the dad feared he wouldn’t walk away from, he said.
Jens Heller, 42, was trying to catch some waves at the Montara State Beach Saturday afternoon when he felt something nudge his board, as if he’d struck something solid, he told local outlets.
Heller, whose wife and 6-month-old daughter were on the beach, figured it was a rock or something similar. The very last thing he expected to see was a shark’s nose tapping against his foot.
The impact knocked Heller off the surfboard and sent him tumbling into the water.
When he looked back, the shark’s eyes, razor-sharp teeth and gums were right behind him, he told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The apex predator — which Heller believes was a white shark — chomped down on his surfboard.
“I kind of panicked, obviously,” he told the Chronicle. “I thought, ‘That’s it. I will not get away from this.’”
He even made eye contact with the behemoth, Heller told SFGATE.
“I shoved the board towards the shark and tried to kick to get away, but then it let go of the board pretty quickly and just swam away. That’s when I grabbed my board as fast as I could and, like, turned to shore and just paddled back out of there,” Heller told the outlet.
While Heller only saw the beast’s head, other surfers who also spotted it estimated that it was likely around 10 feet long.
Heller hightailed it to shore, where he hurried to his wife and daughter. He admitted that he was grateful his wife hadn’t noticed his debacle in the ocean.
“My wife didn’t really, couldn’t believe it. She has a kind of a fear of sharks since she grew up in California,” he said.
After taking a much-needed breather to gather his bearings, Heller noticed that the jarring bite marks on his surfboard were smack dab where he had been standing mere moments before skidding off his board, he described in an interview with ABC7.
Even so, the surfer didn’t think that the shark had any plans to make him its next meal.
“It was probably one of these curiosity bites, because if it had full strength, it would have probably just taken out a whole piece of the board, and that didn’t happen,” he said.
Heller reported his incident to the lifeguards, who shut the beach down for the rest of the weekend.
While the close call didn’t shake Heller’s passion for surfing, he said he doesn’t plan on returning to the site of the attack for a long while.
“It makes you realize how lucky you are to be alive. It’s the power of the ocean. It does what it wants with you. You can’t control it,” he said.
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