Fisherman meets huge great white shark, pokes it in the head

Jerico Mandybur
Updated
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Young surfer Brett Levington was doing some spearfishing with three mates off the coast of Cape Moreton, Queensland, when a four-metre, a.k.a. very big, great white shark swam right for them.  

Brett, who incidentally sounds like a total legend, told the Gold Coast Bulletin he probably would’ve been toast, had he not shoved the animal in the head with his unloaded spear. 

SEE ALSO: One group's strategy for saving sharks: buy a commercial fishing license

"I think if I didn’t poke it with the speargun it would have had a little nibble," he says.

Seemingly the master of spinning great yarns, the Gold Coast resident got descriptive for the ABC, telling them that jabbing the shark felt like hitting a brick wall. 

"Looking into its eyes and its mouth was open an inch - I won't be forgetting that for a while …  When I did that I saw its eye roll back into its head, that was pretty cool, I have seen that in all the movies." 

Presumably very annoyed after all that poking, the sea-terminator changed direction, circling the squad from below. Side note: this isn’t a great sign and means you probably should get out of the water. So that’s what they did. 

"I definitely owe the boys a beer — they didn’t bail on me, they stayed pretty close, says Brett. One mate even captured the "graceful and beautiful" fella on video.

So is he cowering in fear, having survived a close encounter? Not exactly. "We were all screaming, we were all just more stoked that we had seen it," he said, adding, "I'm glad I saw it, it was a very unforgettable moment."

The Government of Queensland currently allows commercial fisheries to catch 600 tonnes of sharks and rays every year. But experts are calling for the reinstatement of programs to better observe shark catches off the state’s coast, after it was revealed that the number of catches has increased. 

Five shark species, including the thresher and hammerhead shark, are protected under UN conventions, but Australia has been accused of opting out of the protection program.