Posted on 02/04/2006 4:50:44 AM PST by Tyche
Snorkeling Boat Captain Helps Scare Shark Away From Kayakers
MAKENA, Maui, Hawaii -- A visitor from Minnesota had a frightening encounter with a shark on Maui on Wednesday.
The shark encounter happened between the Molokini Crater and Makena off the Maui coast in the morning. Dan Lankheit, 57, was kayaking with a friend when he said a huge shark nudged his kayak and wouldn't stop following him.
Lankheit and his friend, Bob, were kayaking halfway between Molokini Crater and Makena when the shark appeared.
"I felt something and looked down and this shark brushed my kayak," Lankheit said.
Lankheit said he turned around to check on Bob, who was trailing him by about 150 feet.
"I yelled to Bob, 'Great white,'" Lankheit said. "All I saw was the side of it, as he brushed up against me I saw his eye look at me. Then he just disappeared."
Lankheit kept paddling, hoping the 15- to 18-foot shark would tire and stop following him.
"I saw the dorsal fin following me and I thought, 'This is not a good thing,'" Lankheit said.
The shark pursued him for about 15 minutes. That's when a boat full of snorkelers from the Maui Dive Shop approached the kayakers.
"I started waving at 'em, 'Please come here,'" Lankheit said.
"When he waved us over, I could see there was a pretty large animal behind him," said Capt. Rae Eckert Stewart, of Maui Dive Shop. "He was just, you know, swimming along, looking at the kayak."
Stewart said the shark had a quite a large head and was swimming close to the surface.
"It didn't swim away right away, until I got close to it and then it didn't veer away from the kayaker. And then, I just gunned the engine a little bit to make some noise and it took off right away," Stewart said.
When the shark swam off, Stewart stopped her 36-foot boat and took the two men and their kayaks to shore.
Lankheit was a bit shaken, but Stewart said he was in good shape.
"He did a good thing. He stayed very calm. He was just paddling slowly," Stewart said.
The state land department has not determined what kind of shark it was, but it is investigating the encounter. The state also notified hotels and resorts on that stretch of beach.
That is a porpoise, ot bottlenosed dolphin, not a shark.
Gives a whole new meaning to "Maui Wowie!"
Tiger shark, probably.
In 1965 I was watching the water show at the end of the Steel Pier at Atlantic City. The "Diving Clowns" were performing when someone in the audience spotted a fin. Soon the whole crowd was shouting "Shark!" I noticed that the tail fin was horizontal and not vertical so I started to chant "Flipper". The divers saw the fin and saluted the "Flipper" chant and continued the show.
I don't know.....but wiping out all the Rotweillers would be a good start.
Great White? In Hawaiian waters? Those waters are kinda "warm" for Whites, aren't they?
The big predatory shark in Hawaiian waters is the Tiger. 'Course Tigers "check things out" by biting first and asking questions later. So maybe it was a GW...
Wouldn't it have been better to stop paddling altogether? I thought sharks were attracted by repetitive sounds and motion.
When that big old tail came up I felt like fly and his tail was the swatter.
Good thing he didn't breech or anything to let me get my jollies off of his version of a belly flop.
It was way cool though. Totally memorable experience. How many people get to see humpbacks at 100 feet from a little foam board while floating in the ocean?
Anyway you ALWAYS go with partners and in this case there were about a dozen people.
As they were floating in a circle pairing off one of my friends told the other guy "hey man! stop kicking me with your fins"...to which the reply came, "I'm not kicking anyone..."
The first guy put his mask down, turned his light on and peeked under the water....
When he came up his first remarks were, "Time to go home fellas! There's a biiiig Tiger shark down there!"
Needless to say that spear fishing session was cut real short.
Not long ago a diver was free diving with one and it got a lot of news coverage.
That's what I figured when they said Hawaii. They're also stubborn like this one behaved.
A great white would be more stealth.
Fins up! Parrotheads unite!
There has been a string of great white sightings in hawaii, with photographic and video evidence.
The one kayak lurking might not have been a Great White. Who knows. How many people from Minnesota can ID different types of sharks?
But its not out of the realm of possibilities...
Prefer colder water, too.
Sharks do mate. Hence, little sharks that grow into big sharks. It doesn't appear they mate for life, though. It appears mating may involve a bit of violence [scars noted on female shoulders] Some have live births, some lay eggs[Great Whites have live birth]. Read once that some scientists believe at least some of the Great White population pups off New York.
That's definitely a White in the video. And I agree that Whites will travel great distances to warmer climes for reproduction purposes, which would include Hawaii. Some of the large females who frequent the Farallons have been detected as far away as the depths off Guadalupe and Mexico.
But I just think the kayak was being trailed by a nosy Tiger. Had it been a White, it likely would've been capsized from beneath.
I wasn't aware that we had multiple species of dogs.
You learn something new every day :)
Our snorkeling group of about 20 people had only been out of the water for about 15 minutes when we saw it.
It was one of the highlights of the trip!
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