Featured Image Credit: World Surf League
By Sarah Sharkey
John John Florence, pro surfer, did not let a shark stop him from keeping his status as the world’s best surfer. The legendary surfer had a definitive victory at the Margaret River Pro in Western Australia earlier this week.
The event was put on hold for about 20 minutes after some serious shark sighting. The competition’s head judge, Rich Porta, said this of the event, “The whole bay’s pretty full of salmon and tuna and everything’s feeding, so in amongst all that is a few smaller sharks and we’re just checking for larger sharks at the moment.”
The surfers saw that the bay was full of fish being fed on by smaller sharks, and it was unsure whether there were also big sharks.
So, the surf competition officials decided to put the event on hold after seeing some bigger splashes that indicated a feeding frenzy happening in the middle of the bay. Porta said “It’s turned into a full feeding frenzy in the middle of the bay. Safety first, we’ll bring the guys in for a 20-minute hold until the fish move out.” This hold was a good call, because surfing through a shark feeding frenzy would not be a good idea for anybody.
Surfer Kolohe Andino admitted to being spooked after the frenzy, but the event proceeded without incident.