Watch: Great white shark circles fishing boat off Bay of Plenty coast for a 'good 20 minutes'
Saturday, 3 April 2021
A Hamilton family came face to face with a great white shark during a father and daughter fishing trip.
Terri Franklin and her father, Vaughan, were fishing off Bowentown, Waihī Beach between Anzac Bay and Matakana Island around 5pm on Thursday when a 2.5 metre great white surfaced and circled the boat for a “good 20 minutes”.
“This juvenile great white came up… happy, not aggressive and really interested,” Terri told Stuff.
“It was exciting… I've never seen a shark this close to the boat before.”
They named it ‘Boris’.
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She also believes she hooked onto two other sharks while out fishing.
The Franklins live in Hamilton, and have been holidaying at Waihī Beach for the last 20 years. Terri, now 29 years old, has been visiting since she was 11.
They're all pretty confident on or in the water.
Vaughan, 58, is principal at Te Rapa Primary School; he’s been scuba-diving since the age of 12 and has dived all across New Zealand. He had never previously come across a great white, but that’s changed recently.
To avoid contact with sharks when fishing Vaughan no longer bleeds fish out the back of the boat until he is ready to head back ashore. Instead, he puts them straight in a bucket.
“We don’t want to encourage them,” Terri said.
“We are in their territory, it’s their home, we’re putting ourselves at risk.”
After catching their daily quota on Thursday, the pair decided to head back in. The fish were cleaned out into the water.
Five minutes later ‘Boris’ showed up.
“For someone who has always been a keen water baby, jumping off the boat… free diving and scuba diving with my father and brother, I’ve never seen so many sharks that close before,” Terri said.
“We’ve seen sharks before, caught sharks, but they’re only ever bronze whalers, never great whites.”
Earlier this week, Josh Lonergan, of Waihī, had a four-metre great white chase the fish he was reeling in three metres away from the boat.
Normally, Terri would swim back into shore from Anzac Bay, but there’s “no way” she would do it now.
While the Franklins are a lot more careful when in the water, it hasn't stopped them scuba-diving.
“We, as a family, had a chat about how we would respond if we ever saw a great white in the water while scuba-diving.”
In early January, Terri and Vaughan were swimming for Tuatua at Papamoa Beach, after a shark attack at Bowentown killed 19-year-old Kaelah Marlow from Hamilton.
“We were respecting the rāhui that was on,” Terri said.
“There were mullet swimming around, which is an indication here’s sharks around, it got a bit airy.
“I was up to my belly button, we had been in the water for 15-minutes, if that, there was a bronze whaler, bigger than me, at my feet.
“That was scary. I screamed at dad and body-surfed in thinking ‘don’t bite my toes’.’’
While Terri was unable to say why shark sightings have become more prominent in recent months, she did say the water was a lot warmer.
People have become careless with fishing and people need to go back to old traditions, she added.
“People are leaving fish guts on beaches. We need to be respectful to each other.”
Marine scientist Dr Riley Elliot applied to the Department of Conservation for permission to launch a project investigating great white shark distribution in the northeast of the country.
He fears delays in researching an increase in shark sightings could lead to another fatal shark attack.
Elliot has identified 11 different juvenile great white sharks in the area, after looking at videos and photos circulating social media.