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A kayaker has told how he paddled for his life with a hungry 2m shark on his tail off Great Barrier Island.
Daniel Pennington spotted the fin suddenly appear behind him but said he was too focused on surviving to feel scared. The shark was chasing a fishing
lure Daniel had been towing.
The 22-year-old and his friend Dean Woodgate were about 20m off the island's southern end on December 18 and had each put out a lure when they had their hair-raising encounter.
"It was dead calm and very glassy. It was a beautiful day ... then Dean saw this fin come up behind my rudder, just like you see in Jaws, like slowly just coming out of the water. He yelled out and I looked behind my kayak and could see this big fin. It was following me and I wanted to get rid of the lure [even though] it was too close to be going for my lure."
After paddling away, Mr Pennington slowly came to a halt and the shark, which was about 2m long, disappeared under the water.
"Meanwhile a bigger shark [around 4m] appeared so I paddled over to Dean to hold on to his kayak so that we looked like a bigger object."
The pair got their knives out to cut their lures.
"Then the bigger shark slowly cruised under our kayaks. My heart was racing. We didn't want to move too fast. Then it circled us for a little while and went away."
The encounter lasted about 10 minutes.
There have been a number of shark sightings this summer, including an incident on Monday in which two Omaha Beach surf lifesavers were attacked in their inflatable.
Windsurfer Denise Parris also got the fright of her life on Monday when a 2m shark circled her board during the RS:X World Championships in Takapuna.
"There was no wind so I was going slow and then I saw a shark. It kept doing little circles and it went around me one time. I didn't want to fall, I can tell you that much," said the 28-year-old American, who was about 1km off Milford Beach.
"At first I was like 'that has to be a dolphin' and I kept looking and I'm like 'no that's definitely not a dolphin'. Then it came and ... did quite a large circle round me and kept quite close for about three minutes ... your heart does skip a beat to say the least."
Close encounters can also happen in shallow waters, as Aucklander Anne Wallace discovered while holidaying at Matarangi Beach in the Coromandel. She was at the beach with her children at the start of the year when they saw a shark about 3m long wallowing in knee-deep water.
"I thought it must be sick or something ... but it headed about 100m up the beach then it went out to sea. Everybody got out of the water pretty quickly."