Oregon Man Surfs on Shark 's Back

Collision leaves man briefly atop great white shark
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 14, 2011 6:19 AM CDT
Oregon Man Surfs on Shark 's Back
Doug Niblack says he's going to keep on surfing.   (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

A surfer off the Oregon coast briefly rode the waves on the back of a great white shark—and lived to tell the tale. Doug Niblack says he was on his longboard when he hit something hard and suddenly found himself standing on the back of a thrashing shark he believes was at least 10 feet long. He fell off after a few seconds and paddled to shore as fast as he could, joined by an off-duty Coast Guard member who had spotted a large shape in the water and seen Niblack standing up as water churned around him.

It was pretty terrifying just seeing the shape emerge out of nothing and just being under me," the 23-year-old tells the AP. "And the fin coming out of the water. It was just like the movies." The incident was bizarre, but not unprecedented, according to the president of California's Shark Research Committee. A few years ago, he says, a woman was kayaking off the California coast when a shark slammed into her kayak from below. She flew into the air and landed on the shark's back, and "at that point the shark started to swim out to sea, so she jumped off its back," he says. (More surfing stories.)

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