During my years of teaching people to SCUBA dive, I had many unusual things happen, one day a shark grabbed me around the chest. It was 1982 and I had taken the old wooden dive boat under the high sandstone cliffs of Marley Headland, some eight miles south of Cronulla NSW. It was winter and the gentle westerly wind was making the sea oily calm and crystal clear. I could see the reef below at 70 feet , I gently motored up to the edge of the reef and dropped the heavy anchor and chain to the bottom.

Unknown to me a rare angle shark was resting on the sand, he was half buried and waiting to ambush fish as they came buy. These sharks are a bottom feeding shark with rows of very sharp small teeth. They are known to be a shark that you leave alone, as like their cousins, the wobbegong shark, they are prone to bite when disturbed . Well the heavy anchor did successfully disturb the shark, it landed on its wide bony back, the steel anchor and chain caused the shark to be filled with aggression, the angel wanted revenge.

After I had geared up the divers I noticed the wind had picked up, I was worried the boat would drift off the reef if the anchor was not lodged under a rock. Rather than up- anchor and motor over the reef again, I decided to go down the anchor rope and inspect the anchor before putting the new divers in the water. I geared up and down the rope I went. As I approached the bottom I noticed the anchor was embedded in a large depression in the sand. The impression seemed to have been made by some type of sting ray or bottom feeding shark. Whatever it was, my anchor had landed on the poor animal. I thought maybe a large stingray, but was confused by the impression the tail of this animal had made, also it seemed to have a wide head with even wider fins.

I arrived at the anchor and lifted it up from the sand and jammed the flutes of the anchor under a rock. As I did so, I felt something fasten its jaws around my chest under my left arm.

My first thought, was that I had be attacked by a large dangerous shark and that I was now to fight for my life. But then I could see the shark was white in colour and had wide petrel fins more like a stingray. I hit the animal on the head with my fist to no avail. It would not let go. I again I hit and tried to drag my self from its vice like grip. The shark let go and swam off in a cloud of sand, as it departed, I could see clearly what it was. It was a angel shark around six to seven feet long. I had only once before seen this rare shark when diving a reef off Jervis Bay NSW. =My next thought was trying to breathe, as the pressure of the sharks jaws had winded me. When 70 feet underwater, being winded is a horrible feeling. I lay on the bottom for a few minutes to regain some normality and then slowly ascended to the surface. When I climbed into the boat I told by assistant what had happened. We carefully took of the buoyancy vest , it had tiny punctures in the bladder, Because it was winter, I had a 9mm thick wetsuit. The suit also had tiny punctures. Once removed I found the teeth had barely touched my shin, a few tiny holes and scratches with little bleeding.

After about half an hour however, the bruising began to show around my ribcage as each side of my chest began to turn blue. It took some weeks for my ribs to fully recover from the soreness.

I have no fear of angel sharks , and would love to film one of these rare sharks, I am happy however that I did not drop my anchor on a tiger shark !!

The Angel Sharks are flat-bodied sharks, very ray-like. They bury themselves in the sand so they can ambush their prey. They are camouflaged to blend into the sand.. They have wide fins that look like wings, giving it its name. Angel sharks have small, sharp teeth in powerful trap-like jaws, once they grab hold of their prey they seldom let go.

Read more .. follow this link for more on Sharks

For more information about David please click here.