A video shows the precise moment when Matt Wilkinson, a professional surfer, is saved from a huge shark.
Around three in the afternoon, pro surfer Matt Wilkinson felt, but did not see, a wild splash near his feet as he paddled at Sharpes Beach, a lonely stretch of water between Ballina and Lennox.
A drone operator, who filmed the encounter, told Wilko through the loudspeaker of the small drone that there was a dangerous shark in the area. As expected, the footage in this video quickly gained popularity.
Wilkinson was on his surfboard moving calmly forward when the dark shadow of the seven-foot-long predator approached him. “I was surfing back at Sharpes Beach and just swimming alone when I heard a splash and a noise, I looked around and couldn’t see anything,” the surfer recounted.
“Then he lowered the drone and told me over the loudspeaker that there was a dangerous shark in the area, that it was returning to the beach,” he added, after seeing the recording, and noticed that the shark had one of his legs in sight and, suddenly, it is scared away. The surfer could not identify the shark
The species of shark is unknown, but Wilkinson said it could be a small white shark, a bull shark or a copper shark. The drone operator, Beau Monks of the Australian UAV Service, spotted the shark near Wilkinson. It all happened very quickly.
“He appeared out of nowhere and went straight to Matt Wilkinson. It moved very fast,” Monks told ABC News Australia. Monks notified the lifeguards and used the drone’s speaker to urge bathers out of the water. The beach was evacuated and closed.
