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CNN Live At Daybreak

Sharks Normal Part of Life for Surfers

Aired August 20, 2001 - 07:10   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Half a dozen shark attacks over the weekend-- and for surfers dealing with sharks is a way of life.

Leon Johnston has been surfing for more than 30 years. He is also the director of the group that sponsored a weekend surfing contest where three surfers were bitten. Good morning, Leon, and thanks for joining us this morning.

LEON JOHNSTON, NATIONAL SCHOLASTIC SURF ASSOCIATION: Good morning. Good to be here.

LIN: All right, as I understand it, three people, three surfers were bitten at a competition in Daytona. Tell me, what was the first that you realized something was wrong?

JOHNSTON: When Dylan Feindt came out of the water limping. He was bleeding at, around the ankle and the shin and what we do is we kind of measure for the bite's circular to see how big it was, probably about a six or seven foot bull shark.

LIN: That's right. As I understand it, sharks six to eight feel long and yet I heard that surfers were still jumping into the water, jumping over the sharks to get to the waves. Is that true?

JOHNSTON: Yes, that's true. I mean what's happening down at our inlet down there happens every time at this time of the year and for years it's been going on. For as many sharks as there are in the water, as many as people, if you did the numbers on it, it really wasn't that many encounters at all. And we only had two surfers in the contest. One was free surfing. He was not a competitor doing it. And the other one was in a heat surfing his 15 minutes.

LIN: Take me into the mind set, though, of a competitive surfer. What would make anyone jump into shark infested waters?

JOHNSTON: Well, if you could see the waves right now, the waves are pretty good and the East Coast doesn't give many waves, especially our area. So when the waves are really as good as they were that morning, everybody is there. We have probably 300 people in the water surfing along with 900 kids that came from all over the state to do the competition. And the race was really fun. So everybody wanted to get out there and get as much as they can.

LIN: Clearly a lot of motivation there. One surfer said -- and this is a quote -- two of them, he's talking about the sharks, "Two of them just came at me as fast as they could and hit my surf board, went under my surf board and came from behind and pulled me off."

What is it that surfers are told to do when they encounter a shark?

JOHNSTON: Well, that story there I didn't hear, but when a shark is moving that quick, he's usually chasing bait fish. You see, they basically don't like the taste of us anyway and if he was pulling him or something of that nature, generally if he was going to pull him, he would be cut pretty bad and I don't remember anything like that happening. But the sharks were chasing bait fish and it generally happened around the low tide area. The area here has a lot of slews and the inlet down there have a lot of bait fish at this time and the bottom of your feet look like a whiting and that's basically their main diet down there is whiting.

That's the reason when the kids got bit they let them go right away and nothing fatal. One had stitches. The other one had butterflies on his foot. So it really didn't tear them up too badly.

LIN: But what do you tell your...

JOHNSTON: I do know that Jeff White last night went back to the hospital. He had oozing and swelling. And I have not heard this morning how that was, but it's also something he's, he knows he deals with.

LIN: Yes. We're going to ask Jeff White in the next hour when he joins us live. But in the meantime, do surfers feel like they're pretty safe on their boards? I mean if they're already out in the water, there's nothing you can do and you're surrounded by sharks, what are you supposed to do?

JOHNSTON: Well, like I was telling the kids as they were paddling out, keep your feet up in the air, keep your hands out of the water, put your hands on the nose and sit there until the shark passes. The sharks do not blatantly chase you around or sit around and wait for something to happen. When they're moving, there's something flashing in the water and they just go for it.

Basically when the kids, when they came out of the water I had seven and 8-year-olds fixing to go out and I looked at them and they looked at me like what? And I said are you guys going? And they said yes, we're going. So they went out and right after that we decided to move the contest down the beach a ways so that the encounters would not be as quite frequent, even though yesterday our kids in the water saw six, seven foot sharks cruising by. But that's all that was happening, they were just cruising by.

LIN: Leon, you make a great point here. I mean just the day before three people were bitten by sharks up the beach. You moved the competition. But why didn't you just cancel the competition? Why didn't you determine that it was just too dangerous for these kids to be in the water? JOHNSTON: Well, the parents didn't want to cancel the competition. The kids didn't want to cancel the competition. And I'm a venue. I am ruled by what their opinions are. I suggested should I stop the competition? When I moved the competition it was 2:00 in the afternoon and I said let's just do this in the morning and they were all sitting on the beach all suited up and ready and they said no, we want to move on.

So we went ahead and moved on for another three or four hours of the day. We had quite a few people in the competition and we wanted to get it done this weekend. So they offered to go back to North Carolina, go back to Jacksonville and go to the school today. I have a few with me right now that I will be taking to school right after I do this with you.

LIN: Leon Johnston, a certain kind of courage or a certain kind of something. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

JOHNSTON: Thank you.

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