‘I could see the teeth.’ Shark bites kayak, knocks California angler into the ocean

Paddling back to shore Friday after a relaxing kayak fishing trip off the Northern California coast, school superintendent David Alexander heard a thud and felt his boat rise out of the water.

“For a second I thought I was being lifted up onto a wash rock,” Alexander said, the North Coast Journal reported. “I saw gray and then I said, ‘That’s not a rock. That’s a shark!’”

The shark twisted the kayak, spilling Alexander into the ocean in Shelter Cove in Humboldt County, KIEM reported.

“I could see the teeth, it wasn’t like he was thrashing but he was kind (of) like, I want to say, gumming it,” Alexander said, according to the station. “I’m thinking to myself when (he) lets go he’s going to swim toward me.”

Alexander, a school superintendent at Bellevue Union School District in Sonoma County, said he expected to die as he clung to his kayak, KRCR reported.

“First thing I thought of is, ‘I had a good life,’ I thought about my wife,” Alexander told the station. “I just hope it doesn’t hurt too bad.”

Then the shark released the kayak and swam away. Alexander’s fishing partner for the day, whom he had met online to avoid being on the ocean alone, helped him back into his kayak, reported the North Coast Journal.

Alexander injured his hand scrambling back into the kayak, which had sprung a leak during the shark’s attack, KRCR reported. He had to pump water from the kayak as his fishing partner and other boaters assisted him back to shore.

It’s an experience he doesn’t expect to soon forget.

“His eyes are so dark … I could see his teeth and his gums,” Alexander said, reported the North Coast Journal. “You see those rows of teeth … that’s something else. I wonder how many times that is going to play in my head.”

This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 7:35 AM with the headline "‘I could see the teeth.’ Shark bites kayak, knocks California angler into the ocean."