A diver from KwaZulu-Natal had a close encounter with a shark while spear-fishing in Umdloti on the north coast of Durban – so close the shark left behind his tooth, in his head.
Seasoned diver, Jarid Norman (38), posted a video on social media showing him dislodging a shark tooth from his bleeding head while singing Baby Shark. The unidentified shark wasn’t a great white and didn’t just take a bite out of him, it also stole his supper.
Norman said this was the first incident of its kind even though he’s had more than 100 encounters with sharks in the water.
ALSO READ: Bodyboarder still missing, bite marks confirmed as great white shark
“I have always dived at Umdloti at that spot and even moved there to dive. I was going out on a routine dive and sharks are always around, it’s like snakes are in the garden and they leave you alone unless you antagonise them or have something that they want,” he said.
He was thrilled when he shot a rock cod for dinner with his spearfishing rod, but then he reached for his dive knife and “it felt like something just punched me in the head. It was not an attack, it was going for the fish in my hand. It’s like a dog, if you are holding a pie and it goes for the pie and bites your hand it’s a case of mistaken identity”, he explained.
“I initially thought my dive partner had perhaps been dumped on me and I popped my head up to look around and saw him a few meters away…and then… it came straight back at me and judging by size it wasn’t a massive shark like Jaws but he was big enough to have cheek and he came at me and pulled the rock cod from me,” Norman said.
When he saw blood he assumed it was from the fish, until his partner said it was actually coming from his head.
“I felt my head and there was something in it and I thought maybe I had stabbed myself but when I used the mirror in the car I saw that it was a bone colour. It was a little fragment of the shark’s tooth,” he said.
The KZN Sharks Board requested the tooth to investigate what type of shark bit him. His close encounter will not stop him from venturing out to sea again, he is too fascinated with sharks to be put off them – bite or no bite!