A young Pretoria teen surfing at Chintsa East beach on Saturday survived an attack by a 1.3m-long ragged-tooth shark.
A shark scare was also reported by other surfers in the area at the weekend.
Campers Charlie Claassen, 38, and Maximillian Crozier, 14, and Rhodes Ichthyology Professor Peter Britz, 55, were surfing at Chintsa on Sunday afternoon when Claassen and Crozier saw a shark on the surface a few metres away.
Britz, who had left the water minutes earlier, suspected it could have been a bronze whaler or ragged-tooth shark.
“The water was cold and murky which suits them. A ragged-tooth, which has needle-like teeth for grasping not biting, can mistake a human foot for a fish.”
East London surfer Kevin Harris said early in December a great white shark circled in front of his surfboard while out at Nahoon Reef.
“The water was clear and cool. It was snaking and twisting its body looking very excited. It vanished. So did I!”
Harris said a diving friend had described how just a week later, a similarly coloured shark had harassed him and his dive buddy at Three Sisters a few hundred metres off Bonza Bay. — Additional reporting by Mike Loewe.