Mick Fanning tribute to fellow surfer during shark attack

Video showed the shark’s fin rising out of the water behind Fanning as he paddled on his board waiting to take his turn.

“You could see a lot of splashing, and the shark had its head down”. I was on top of it, trying to put my board between us. “Thanks for looking out for me”. “I am just lucky it wasn’t my time”.

“I had this thought, what if it comes around for another go at me?” he added, “before I knew it, the boat was there….”

The timing of the comp this year didn’t help either, Casagrande says. I was sitting there… He said those are sensitive areas and the shark may let you go. In addition to surfing in primo white-shark hunting ground, the competition was held during a sardine run, a migration of billions of small fish that draws hundreds of sharks to South Africa’s coast during the summer.

Obviously, Mick and the shark became a meme soon after.

Fanning’s incredible escape was broadcast live on TV with the 34-year-old seen wrestling with the shark after being knocked off his board before being rescued by a jet-ski rider and dragged to the shore shaken but amazingly unhurt. “Oh man, I’m trippin'”, Fanning told a reporter for the World Surf League relieving the public saying, “I’m totally fine, I’ve got nothing wrong with me”.

‘I was just running on instinct. That traumatised me for a while. But yeah, still nothing compared to what Mick experienced. He survived a shark attack, without a scratch. “I was like, I don’t know what to do”, he said.

Asked whether he would go surfing again, he recalled that some surfers had actually been bitten and continued with the sport.

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“When you’re a surfer you’re in the water all the time, and one of the dangers of being in the ocean is that something could happen”. I saw him start to get kind of manhandled by the shark, and I was kind of freaking out.

But that’s an individual choice.

World Surf League (WSL) chief executive Paul Speaker said any decision over whether to abandon Jeffreys Bay would be largely in the hands of competitors. “Certainly it will give us an opportunity to sit down and reevaluate more the safety side of what we do”, commissioner Kieren Perrow told Australian Associated Press. “I don’t think anyone realises right now how fortunate that outcome was”.

The Gold Coast surfer says he’s not sure how long it will take to get over the attack.

Three-time World Champion Fanning was bumped off his board and forced to fight the shark off during the attack.