The first documented killer whale attack

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Jon Manss
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The first documented killer whale attack

Post by Jon Manss »

Big Sur is famous for it’s dramatic mountain range meeting the coast where it plummets even further into the ocean depths The point at Point Sur features a ‘rock’ jutting out of the Pacific about three hundred and sixty feet looking very much like a rugby football planted half way into the sea.. The north-facing beach connects the rock to the rest of the coast. This beach shelf has an incredible drop off .The swells coming in are definitely deep-water swells. They break top to bottom and shifty left or right, with Hawaiian force. Its offshore wind is southerly, and takes a northern swell. The rock has a naval weather station and lighthouse on top and all the point is off limits to the public. Normally I don’t pin point my surf spots but this one is yours if you dare.
Mike Stevens and myself surfed this beach break for the first time one winter weekend. We saw it from the highway as four to six feet. The trespassing signs were well posted, but the lack of enforcement left no doubt, we we’re surfing this place. Once on the beach we realized we were looking at a solid eight foot swell and began to see the hidden rocks in the middle of shore pound. Needless to say that session was sketchy and few waves scored but we came back with great stories.
We got three of our friends stoked and were already planning their trip the next weekend. Hans Kretchmer Greg Taylor and Jim Taylor went the next week and found a little smaller day but the same beautiful conditions. Greg and Jim, kneeboarders, were surfing a right and Hans, a stand up, picked a peak right next to them only left. Every time they cut out they were right next to the others exit zone so they were close together. Hans was waiting out a lull when he noticed a large black fin head straight for him from the inside. It plowed right into him as he sat there and bit his upper thighs and the bottom of his board. Hans yelled shark and pounded his fist on its head. Greg and Jim saw the commotion and heard Hans yell shark but the two brothers weren’t seeing shark- they saw killer whale!. The whale left Hans with one bite and then headed out to sea. The brothers helped Hans but as they told it Hans needed little help finding the shore. The two were able to stop the bleeding and summon help from the naval station. This was the first time an orca had bit anyone on the West Coast and at the time I believe anywhere. It got all the marine science folks all upset and several interviews with Hans and the brothers were conducted until they were convinced. In any event Hans got away with muscles cut and stitched up and back on his feet in 6 months. Lucky Guy. A year later Hans was camping in the Sierras and got bit by a coyote which was feared to have rabies. He had to go through the painful shots. Not So Lucky Guy. I think Hans lives in the city some where and doesn’t venture out into nature any more. And the navy made it a lot tougher to trespass. Jon
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ORCA

Post by Poidog »

whoa, great story. sounds like hans is the luckiest man alive, has he gone surfing since the attack?
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Orca

Post by Man O' War »

Jon,
What a story-teller. I'm thinking you're going to get requests at the November Festival to tell your stories in person... at night... by the beach fire...
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Post by DavidW »

Jon, Point Sur is a great place to visit when they open the light house up to visitors once or twice a year. I was fortunate enough to surf there once when doing some environmental monitoring work there for the Navy, and have heard several stories of guys that have scored insane waves there.
I'm glad you wrote your story, I too once saw Orcas surfing huge waves there and very few people believed me.
I used to do a lot of field work in Big Sur for the hotels and camp grounds, this made up for my meager pay at the time, and would surf the various places down there frequntly. One afternoon I was on my way back up the coast and I pulled off on the shoulder over looking the Point Sur Lighthouse and beach. After watching what looked like 6-8' waves pound the beach I thought I saw dolphins surfing in the line up. This seemed odd to me, but I knew there were a pod of dolphins that frequented Marina, so I was not too suprised. I grabbed my binoculars for a better look. Well, the surf was more in the 10-15" range and those were not dolphins, they were Killer Whales!! I watched them play in the waves for about 1/2 an hour. They surfed just like dolphins and put on a great show. When I got back to work and told my story, everyone thought I had sampled too much of the local product that morning and basically called BS on me.
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to david

Post by Jon Manss »

David Did this happen to you surfing there? While out in the line up the water below was deep blue or deep green but as soon as you started to take off that dark water abruptly turned to a clear view of a white sand reef with rocks thrown here and there. It took my breath away and spooked my first two attempts at taking off. That whole area has some of the clearest water on our coast. Thanks for your story, way cool. Jon
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Post by MTBarrels »

Although there was no indication of any sort of a possible attack, I have an 8mm movie segment that I took at Blacks in the early-middle 60's with two of my friends out in overhead waves. In the segment, they're paddling (well out from the beach) over the crests and disappearing into the troughs of the waves. Each time they'd disappear from sight, not much farther outside from them you can see the fins of (as best I recall) five killer whales passing by southbound. Following that sequence in the movie is a short segment showing a copy of the San Diego Evening Tribune for that day, which headlined: "Killer Whales Route Swimmers from La Jolla Cove." My two friends (the total crowd present at Blacks) never saw the killer whales, didn't hear me shouting or see me waving, and didn't believe me until they saw the film.
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Post by DavidW »

Jon, I don't recall the transition from dark to light so much as I do the clarity of the water. One thing that did get my attention was the deluge of Pelicans into the mouth of the Little Sur river. For about 45 min. they were diving non stop for some kind of fish, anchovies?, it was pretty amazing.
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My Killer Whale Incident

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Sometimes it's the fear of killer whales that might be worse than the reality of their presence.

Case in point: around 1972 I'm kneeboarding Steamer Lane on a somewhat foggy, minus tide morning with a good 6' south swell. About 8 of us are having a great session. We are momentarily distracted by the voice of a boy on the cliffs above us shouting out something..."seals! seals!" it sounds like. "Duh, kid," I think, "there's a whole rock 50 yards out with 20 or so seals on it at any given moment." Then we hear him shout louder, and clearly we can now make out: "Whales! Whales!" We all peer out beyond the kelp beds and our eyes bug out as we see two very large killer whale dorsal fins (there's nothing else shaped liked them!) rise up above the kelp, moving north outside the lineup.

Two events then kick in immediately: every seal in a 100 yard radius of ocean all freak out and converge on Seal Rock and climb over each other trying to get to the pinnacle of the rock, barking out at the top of their lungs! Seems like hundreds of 'em, and it was kind of a funny sight, I suppose. Not so funny for the seals, however.

The other event is the deep panic we all feel in the lineup, and we quickly and nervously paddle to the very shallow inside reef that's exposed at minus tide. We begin to huddle and totter on the reef while peering out into the mist. It doesn't seem to dawn on us that nothing much could attack us in 6" of water and sharp rocks; we're all pretty scared. One of the two last surfers takes a wave just in front of the reef as he paddles in with a look of panic on his face, and then he makes an ill-fated mistake--he stands up and tries to surf it. It caves over immediately and he's slammed down right on the reef. We all cring! He comes up with the bottom half of his ear hanging off his head and blood streaming out of his ear. Now we're all crying up to the cliff for help. Fortunately, there is a doctor there who used to hang out a lot at the Lane (Manss, do you remember his name? The guy was legendary). Anyway, we got him to the base of the cliff and the doc took care of him from there.

We sort of forgot about the two killer whales in all the commotion, and when we turned back out to scan the horizon, none of us saw them again. One last surfer had remained in the lineup nonplussed the whole time, just grabbing whatever set waves we had all vacated. I guess he figured he was safe there on the inside of the kelp beds, or possibly that killer whales could never pose a threat to man, or maybe he was just insane.

I can't remember if I ever paddled back out that morning.
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wow

Post by Jon Manss »

Scott The doctor's name was Dr. Scott. As I read this story I couldn't beleave how simular the event was with one I had. Except my veiw of this was on the cliff next to someone yelling whale. There was a pod outside the kelp beds just swimming about and yes it did stress out the seals. The panic from all who was out was very comical from the cliffs. And as in your story someone did get hurt right over table rock. I would guess this was the same day if your story ended there. But you mention one lone surfer left in the line up. That is exactly how it happened from my veiw on the cliff. The lone surfer's name escapes me but he was known as Caveman. He would ride old long board wrecks and he definately looked Neandrathal. Scott I didn't yell whale but I was right there. Too funny Jon
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Wow...Two Synoptic Gospels of the Same Event

Post by Scott »

Jon,

Thanks for your perspective. Guess it shows the story didn't grow in my mind over the years (which I think probably happened on most of the stories I heard during the recent Baja Gathering!!). Amazing that we witnessed the same event simulaneously on the cliff and in the water over 30 years ago, and yet you and I have never really met. It'll be great to correct that at the Kneeboarding Festival in November. Yes, Doc Scott was the name; thanks for reminding me.

So it was the Caveman who stayed out to do battle with those seagoing mastedons, eh?

Hey, Jon, did you see any of the deep tube rides I got that day at the Lane? How 'bout the two barrel rolls I pulled off in succession? Surely I couldn't have imagined any of that if the rest of my narrative was so accurate...

Scott
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Post by Jon Manss »

Scott the only manuever I saw from you was a biblical walk on water headed strraight for the beach. :lol: Jon
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Post by Hans Kretschmer »

Jon-
People don't always quite believe the killer whale story. A new employee in my office heard the tale, said to himself "I've never heard of someone being bit by a killer whale," went on-line and your story was the first hit. I got a lagh out of reading your account... I remember a few things differently but the story stands. I now live in Oregon. I moved here to study and am an architect in Portland. I stopped surfing for a number of years but my present boss is an avid waterman and got me back into the waves about 12 years ago. It didn't take much prompting! There's some great surfing up here. In the mean time I've traveled overseas to surf a number of times and have had some of my best life experiences through surfing....including... Gotta go but would love to reconnect. Hans.
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Post by Coldsalt »

About he same time as this storie took place at Big Sur their was an attack of a surfer in Elfin Cove Ak. a small fishing community north of Sitka and Westish of Juneau the Elfin Cove surfer was alone and had no witnesses. He took his board to whale biologist Jan Straily who confirmed the "cylinder/ circular" tooth marks/punctures from an Orca. I my self in 2003 was very aggressively run into a shallow reef at Shoals by three orca juvies (out hunting we guess). As I got into the reef I was surrounded by heads. Sealion heads, sea otter heads, seal heads and river otter heads. All looking at me looking at them. They seem to think that I was the lesser of two evils and just gave me stink-eye until I got thru the kelp and on to dry land. Scared the crap out of me! Later on that day we were chased momentarily out of are camp by a young Alaskan brown bear (just a bigger dumber grizzly but still different). The camp fire we had that night on the beach could be seen from space. On this page you can see one of two fires we had that night. Shoals beach.
http://coldsalt.com/Pics.html
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Post by jdkneelo »

Gees i;m glad i live on the gold coast
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Post by Coldsalt »

No snakes... Thats all I got.
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