All Doug Niblack wanted to do was ride a few waves. But his longboard crashed into something, and the surfer found himself standing on a squrirming great white shark.
“When I put my hands down on it, it felt rubbery like Neoprene, like a wetsuit,” Niblack told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “There was a moment there when everything was going on, I just kind of made my peace. I honestly thought I was going to die. Then paddling back in, I was praying the whole time. Like, ‘Don’t let it be following me.'”
Niblack was surfing at Seaside, Ore. when he rammed into the shark. After allowing Niblack to stand for a few seconds, the shark took off, catching Niblack’s board on its dorsal fin and pulling Niblack a few feet before the surfer finally escaped.
“It was pretty terrifying just seeing the shape emerge out of nothing and just being under me,” Niblack said. “And the fin coming out of the water. It was just like the movies.”
Oddly enough, Niblack’s encounter with the great white isn’t the only such story. The president of the Shark Research Committe and director of the Global Shark Attack File, Ralph Collier, recounted an incident in which a shark rammed into a woman’s kayak, causing her to land on the shark’s back.
Niblack said he will go back to surf, this time equipped with a waterproof camera and a sticker of a shark with a red slash through it on his surfboard.
