I saw an approximately fifteen foot long Great White Shark attack a woman on her kayak yesterday morning in West Cove, Catalina Island, at about nine am. The woman is fine physically and was not actually bitten, but I'm sure she's going to have her share of nightmares for some time to come. I fished Catalina Island Friday and Saturday with several friends this weekend. We started fishing the Vee's well before dawn on Saturday and then left headed to West Cove around 8:30 to follow up on some info I had received. We arrived at West Cove around nine and tucked in about thirty yards off the beach right at the dirty water line. As we pulled in I had noticed a woman in a blue kayak paddling west to east about a hundred yards off the beach. (There were four other boats in the cove besides us. One of the boats was a Mickelson 50 out of Huntington Harbor. The woman on the kayak was from that boat and was paddling around while her family was on the big boat fishing for seabass.) Anyway, we anchored up and I was in the process of pinning my first squid on the hook when I heard a scream from the direction of the kayak. I looked over and saw the kayak flipping over and the woman going in the water. She was about a hundred yards away. I saw a big splash next to the boat and then saw what I initially thought was an arm waving back and forth and splashing. The "arm" was dark so I thought I was looking at a person in a wetsuit waving his arm back and forth. My brain didn't correctly process what I was seeing and for the first second or two I thought maybe somebody had played a trick on the lady by pushing her off the kayak and was screwing around and splashing her. I could also see a large dark shape maybe a foot out of the water that I thought could have been a couple of people in dark wetsuits but obscured by the splashing from the "arm". After about two seconds I realized the "arm" was actually part of a huge shark tail oriented vertically in the water and it was thrashing back and forth right at the surface. The large dark shape was actually part of the shark sticking out of the water. The portion of the tail I could see looked like it was three feet long. The shark was pushing on the kayak and the woman was on the far side of the kayak holding on and screaming. Apparently, when she was knocked out of the kayak at some point she ended up with the kayak between her and the shark. I'm sure that's what saved her life. Anyway, the shark was pushing on the up-side down kayak to get at her and the whole while she is shrieking like nothing I've ever heard. We were anchored so there was nothing we could do in time to be of any use, but there were two other small boats drift fishing. We were closer and I don't know if they couldn't see what was happening as well, or what. We started screaming at them to go help her and that there was a shark and they both went at her at full throttle. By this time the shark had sunk out and the woman had begun swimming away from the kayak toward the big Mikelson. Watching her swimming was about the sickest thing I have ever seen. It was a feeling of complete helplessness. I was positive that big shark was going to come up and hit her at any second. The vessel "Topless" (looked sort of like an open 20 foot Skipjack, but I don't think that's what it was), got to her first and pulled her out of the water. Amazingly, she was unscratched. The Topless took her back to her boat and the other small boat (a blue center console) towed her kayak back for her. The woman's family (including her grade-school aged kids) were all on the Mikelson watching helplessly as this whole thing went down. (They were anchored as well.) Absolutely the most amazing and scary thing I've ever seen on the water, or anywhere else for that matter. When the two guys on Topless pulled her out of the water I was sure I was going to see a lot of blood coming off of her. She was still screaming for several seconds after being pulled from the water, but I was shocked to see her remain standing. I put the glasses on her and was even more shocked that I couldn't see any blood on her. I used to be an EMT and as I was watching them begin to pull her out I was sure that I was going to be looking for tourniquet materials in the very near future. I still can not believe that she was untouched in that attack. We motored over and talked to them after a little while to make sure that she was o.k. She was in kind of a giddy, euphoric "I can't believe I'm alive." frame of mind. She said that she felt the bump from underneath and that it rolled her into the water. She said at one point (I guess toward the end of the attack) the shark went under the kayak and she pulled her feet up and then was kicking at it. She was incredulous as she was telling us that when kicking at it there was actually a point where she had both of her feet on its back and she was half standing on it for a split second as it went under her. She said as she was swimming for the boat all she could think about was the fact that her family was going to watch her get killed by a shark. I never saw enough of the shark to give a reliable estimate of length, but I can certainly say it was a very big shark. The woman said it was significantly longer than her kayak and from what I saw of its tail and flank, I would have to agree. The kayak was a two-person, sit on top, type and looked to be about twelve feet long. My best estimate of the shark is that it was at least fifteen feet and probably a bit longer. We all congratulated her on her having survived about as close a call as you can possibly have. I also told her to go buy a lottery ticket. Bill P.S.: It was blazing hot at Catalina on Saturday. Despite that, nobody was the least bit tempted to go into the water until we were well away from West Cove. 
We all finally did swim once we got around to a spot just west of Empire. The guys on the Topless happened to go by and turned around to talk about what we had all seen. They agreed it was hot, but had apparently decided they wouldn't be swimming at Cat any time soon. They also made it clear that if they needed to pull me out of the water they were going to use a gaff. One more thing. Literally, as the first screams started, my friend's new wife was changing into a bathing suit for the purpose of going for a swim.
This post edited by WJW 06/23/2008
We all finally did swim once we got around to a spot just west of Empire. The guys on the Topless happened to go by and turned around to talk about what we had all seen. They agreed it was hot, but had apparently decided they wouldn't be swimming at Cat any time soon. They also made it clear that if they needed to pull me out of the water they were going to use a gaff. One more thing. Literally, as the first screams started, my friend's new wife was changing into a bathing suit for the purpose of going for a swim.This post edited by WJW 06/23/2008
