Shark Attack

Rodney Fox Shark Attack

Broadcast 6.30pm on 1/04/2002
Producer: Peter Lindon

In 1963 South Australian spear-fishing champion Rodney Fox was viciously attacked by a shark. Although he suffered near fatal wounds, today Rodney works with sharks which he now sees as ‘beautiful animals’ and strongly supports the protection of one of the most feared predators – the Great White.

RODNEY FOX: December 8, 1963 is a date that I'll never forget. I was the South Australian spear fishing champion, and I was trying to regain my title. Halfway through the competition, I'd swum off shore trying to find a big strong fish.
And I dived down, I saw one.

I was within split seconds of shooting it -- when all of a sudden this huge crunch, and it hit me in the chest, knocked my gun out of my hand, the mask off my face, and I was hurled through the water faster than I've ever swam before.
It was just a nightmare.

In the hospital, they cut my wetsuit off me, and they found that there were these huge gashes and teeth marks, and every rib in my chest had been broken, hole through the shoulder blade, the lung had been punctured.

Another miracle is the main artery from the heart to the stomach was left exposed, together with the spleen. One nick and I would have died. Nothing was missing, so when they stitched me up, and I -- I repaired, and I've really nothing wrong with me today, except the scars.

Death, devil, hell -- that's the level that I put this word 'shark' into in the early days. It was out there, it was the worst thing in the world, but we knew so little about it.

After I had killed four or five great whites on hooks and lines, and we'd studied them for quite a few film crews -- and I had actually built cages and we'd filmed them swimming around, and felt safe, a new world came about, because we were now watching these beautiful animals glide and swim through the water, and we saw them in a different way than anybody had seen them before.

They didn't come up and try and kill us or attack us every time they saw us.
They were just looking for food. And the food that they eat and pursue is the sick, the weak, the slow, the ones with viruses, all the ones that are very plentiful, and so the sharks keep pressure -- something that humans can't do -- on all of the populations. And without them, there'd be a big mess in the oceans.

The protection of the great white shark is a great step forward. We really don't know much about the other sharks. They could be in trouble. But the great white shark is the most feared predator in the world today, and so it gets a lot of publicity. And having them protected and giving a chance to learn more about them is a wonderful thing.

The thing that attacked me many years ago was an incredible spirit or a problem or a death or a fear or something, but now I look back and I realise that the sharks really aren't man-eaters, that they are part of our life, part of our ocean, and they deserve more respect than being just thought of as 'the best shark's a dead shark'.