Terrifying 7-metre Great White Shark sparks beach evacuation

Big presence: the shark off the Australian coast
Mark Chandler18 January 2016

A beach was evacuated yesterday after a great white shark up to seven metres long was spotted in the water.

A crew on the Westpac Lifesaver Rescue Helicopter spied the Jaws-like predator while flying over Marino Rocks in south Adelaide.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the shark was just 200 metres from shore when the alert went out for swimmers to evacuate and a junior surf lifesaving carnival to be cancelled.

One person on the Shark Alerts South Australia Facebook page, claiming to be a crew member, wrote: “It's the biggest I've ever seen as a crew member in the Westpac chopper. We put it down as 7m the photo really doesn't do it justice."

A spokesman for Surf Life Saving South Australia said: “We had our jet boats offering water coverage at the carnival, and they were called into action, as were the inflatable rescue boats.

"By the time they got there, the shark had moved into deeper waters. There wasn't another sighting of the shark ... and it was moving fairly quickly into deeper water."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in