Click on photo for more pics of Shredder Photo courtesy of Absolute Adventure

That was Matt, one look into his face I knew he was speaking the truth. Our ship's captain was not so sure, 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 ships crew was summoned forward to have a look and sure enough came up with the last 5 feet of cable ending in one very messy shredded fray. A 14 foot Great White shark had just leapt up almost 10 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!

We were now adrift with shark cages fully deployed, sharks in the water and one shark (Shredder) with a new taste for anchor cables. In the history of shark diving I doubt this has ever happened to another dive boat. Crew raced forward and aft, we had our shark divers calmly exit the cages (30 minutes early) 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 is well known for extremely poor visibility, in fact 20 feet of vis is considered by many 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 vis attacking an object that kind of resemble a prey item. In this case we believe that Shredder (due to the damage in his left eye) just has to "try harder" to survive - it is a form of apex predator adaptability. With a handicap like a missing eye this animal has to attack far more objects in his quest for food sources just to stay alive. Our anchor cable being white in color and as round as a man's wrist might have seemed like an intestine from a dead whale or some other food source. Either way his attack mode was both spectacular and devastating, unfortunately none of our crew got to witness it first hand - it must have been simply amazing to witness in person (Matt forgot his camera!).