By Paul Lebowitz

Aug 3, 2007

Bean Hollow Angler Escapes Injury, Chewed-Up Kayak Not so Lucky

BEAN HOLLOW STATE BEACH – Dan Prather’s fishing kayak needs quite a bit of TLC after a suspected great white shark took a toothy taste of the plastic craft on July 21. Prather was drifting a mile from the beach just north of Central California’s Bean Hollow when his kayak was unexpectedly hammered from beneath, knocking the Concord, California resident into the water.

Prather’s fellow kayak fisherman John Dale of Foster City shared what happened next.

Believing his kayak had been struck by a boat, Prather surfaced, only to see a large shark chewing on the bow of his red Hobie Adventure.

“The only thing he saw was the head. He said the head was huge. It wasn’t a gigantic shark, but it had the entire front of the kayak in its mouth,” Dale said.

BATTLE-SCARRED KAYAK TELLS THE TOOTHY TALE – Relieved Concord resident Dan Prather displays the damage caused to his kayak by a suspected great white shark. Prather was fishing a mile from Bean Hollow State Beach on Saturday when he was knocked into the water by a violent impact from below. After a harrowing few moments watching the shark chew on his boat, the uninjured Prather regained his seat and sprinted for the safety of the beach. PHOTO COURTESY DOUG MAR

Prather climbed back on the kayak even as the shark continued to gnaw on the boat.

Eventually the shark lost interest, but not before Prather found himself briefly back in the water. By the time he slithered on board his battered vessel a second time, the shark had lost interest in its inert prey and moved on.

Dale played wing-man as Prather raced his bruised kayak to the beach. When they reached the safety of the sand they found a series of deep scratches and gouges carved into the thick plastic.

“The kayak held up well. It was punctured from the bottom where the point of a tooth poked through,” Dale said. The kayak was filling with water, but slowly.

“Bean Hollow is a very sharky area,” said Bill Pennington of NorCal Kayak Anglers.com the day after the incident. The website owner said local kayakers are aware of the great white sharks that haunt the state beach located less than a dozen miles north of notorious Ano Nuevo State Reserve. A great white attacked kayaker Ken Kelton at that well-known elephant seal rookery in 1992. Like Prather, the lucky Kelton escaped with a whale of a tale but no injuries.     

“We thought this early in the season it was ok to fish at Bean Hollow. The sharks shouldn’t be there in large numbers until late summer,” Pennington said. “I guess we were wrong.”

Allen Bushnell, the fish reporter for the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper and the area’s most experienced kayak fishing guide, called the attack “a very rare occurrence.”

“It could happen again tomorrow; it could happen again in 20 years. It’s the chance we take when we go out there. Thank God he wasn’t hurt,” Bushnell said.

Seasoned kayak angler Chuck Espiritu, who talked with Prather after his stressful ordeal, said Prather wasn’t doing anything likely to attract a shark such as dangling injured fish from a stringer.  

“Quite a few people may reconsider where they fish,” Espiritu predicted.

Joel Lotilla, another veteran kayaker who fished Bean Hollow on Saturday, said unusually calm conditions at the normally forbidding beach drew 17 kayakers.

“The shark could have hit any one of us,” Lotilla said, adding that from now on, he won’t kayak alone on the ocean. But little else has changed. Lotilla was back at Bean Hollow on Sunday. The beach remained open to recreation.  

Shark attacks on kayaks, while not unknown, are extremely rare. Dale, philosophical about the risk, will be back too.

“When you’re on the water, the shark is king. If you can’t deal with it, don’t go out. It can happen anywhere. It won’t affect me; I’ll go out again,” Dale said.