AUSTRALIAN surfer Mick Fanning has described his shark attack in South Africa earlier this year as a “wake up call”.
The Triple World Surfing Champion was competing in the final round of the J-Bay open in July when he was attacked by the great white. And he says the incident changed his outlook.
“You sort of have different moments throughout your career where sometimes you take things for granted, sometimes you get a wake up call,” the 34-year-old told news.com.au.
“For me I was really appreciating everything I was getting and everything that I was doing; I felt like it was starting to build and then it was like, ‘here you go, deal with that’. It’s just a different sort of world.
“I guess the one thing it sort of did was just made me appreciate the love and everything that I got from family and friends - even still, going around the world and seeing people I haven’t seen (since it happened), it just makes me appreciate those sort of people and just that support.
“Sometimes in the past I would shrug it off and say, ‘don’t be silly’, but now I embrace it.”
Escaping from the incident unharmed, Fanning, who’s a guest of honour at the GQAwards in Sydney tonight, is aware of how lucky he is. But he couldn’t suppress the need to get back out in the water — returning to the surf just weeks later.
“It was weird, half of me wanted to just get out to feel the ocean again,” he said. “I had about a week away from it, and the other half was, I was stuck inside for a week because there was just media crew everywhere, so I just wanted to go out there where I didn’t have a phone, I didn’t have cameras, I could just go surfing, which was really cool.
“For me, it doesn’t matter what’s going on on the land, you can just go surfing and wash it off, so it’s pretty good like that.
The close call made headlines around the world and introduced Fanning to people unfamiliar with the Aussie surfing champ. And while he’s aware of the extra fame it brought him (which he “cops on the chin”), Fanning says he’s more impressed with what the coverage did for the sport.
“It definitely blew it up, that’s for sure. To have surfing on the front of the New York Times, that’s just unheard of,” he said. “I know the numbers for the world surf league went up! It’s great, surfing is such a beautiful sport so it sucks that it took that to make the numbers up.”
As a response to a number of recent fatal and non-fatal shark incidents, calls are growing louder for sharks to be culled in Australia. But Fanning disagrees with the controversial idea, saying “you don’t get anything out of that”.
“When they’re out tagging these sharks and trying to find more research, I think that’s great,” he said.
“We don’t know enough about sharks. Everyone just thinks it’s this crazy predator, but there are lions and stuff in the jungle, we know a lot about them. But sharks, we haven’t put enough research into them.
“And with so many more people going into the ocean around the world, there are going to be more [attacks] so if we can get some research, new techniques to deter them or get an understanding of it, that’s where I sit on it all.”
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