A close encounter with a four metre bronze whaler gives spear fisher Scott Adamson the best shark tale so far this summer.
When Scott and his buddies returned to their boat with fish on a float after fishing in the water off Rabbit Island, they heard a splash.

Scott Adamson and the bite marks on his float.

'We'd been out two hours, probably,” says Scott.
'I was just heading back to the boat and had a few fish on the float line behind me.
'I stuck my head back under and saw the shark swimming straight at me. Then it did a 180 turn and went back and finished eating my fish off my float line.
'Once it had eaten my fish it came back and bit my float – more in annoyance than anything. It didn't seem too worried about humans.

'It was a bronze whaler. I had a good view of it that's for sure. It had to be about four metres.”
He estimates the mass at 250-300kg. It ate the four butterfish on the float line and left a good impression of the jaw size cut into his float with its sharp teeth.
'I was quite lucky I had the fish on a float,” says Scott.
'It's quite dangerous not to have them on a float.”
A lot of inexperienced spear fishermen keep their fish alive and in catch bags held close to their bodies, says Scott. The fish keep moving, attracting sharks.
'There's a lot of benefits in killing the fish so they are not struggling on the end of the float or in a catch bag, That's what they come after,” says Scott.
He still doesn't know for certain what made the splash as the shark never broke the surface. Scott thinks it might have been the float being dragged under.
'The shark never came out of the water, it stayed completely under.”
'We had four of us in the water all day. The other two were off the front of the boat. When I first heard the splash I thought it was them playing a joke ‘cause it gave me a hell of a fright.”
Scott was diving off the back of the boat with buddy Adam Temple.
'He saw it before me and just about ran on the water back to the boat,” says Scott.
'I wanted to go out the next day but none of my mates wanted to.”