Scotty was not unsure, saying, “That’s a rated 20,000 pound poly-pro anchor cable. There’s no way a shark just bit through it.” One of the ship’s crew was summoned forward to have a look and sure enough came up with the last five feet of cable ending in one very messy shredded fray. A 14-foot Great White had just leapt up almost ten feet clear out of the water and bit through our anchor cable, about the size of a man’s wrist and designed to hold an 86-foot dive boat in place in even the roughest weather conditions!

Close Encounter (Patric Douglas)

We were now adrift with shark cages fully deployed, sharks in the water and Shredder who had just acquired a new taste for anchor cables. In the history of shark diving I doubt this has ever happened to another dive boat. The crew raced forward and aft, we had our shark divers calmly exit the cages 30 minutes earlier, pulling them from the water in record time. In exactly 20 minutes, we had the ship squared away and ready to get under power. Once we had settled down, our divers were thrilled. After all you cannot call it an “Absolute Adventure” until a shark chews through your anchor cable!

The Theory
It is rare for Great Whites to randomly attack objects that are unusual or strange to them, although there’s data from the Farallon Islands in San Francisco showing attacks on objects floating out there. The difference is the Farallons are well known for extremely poor visibility. In fact, twenty feet of visibility is considered a great day out there. White sharks are primarily visual predators, so it is not surprising to see data coming from the Farallons of sharks in poor visibility attacking objects that resemble a prey.

Dramatic Profile (Patric Douglas)

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