A surfer who had a near-death experience when a giant shark appeared under his board has thanked the ‘guardian angels’ who risked their lives to warn him of danger and crashed their plane into the sea as a result.
Bill Ballard was surfing at Wallagoot Beach on the south coast of New South Wales on September 25 when he saw a gyroplane circling overhead and flying unusually low.
The pilot and his passenger had seen Mr. Ballard paddle over a large school of salmon where the large shark, about twenty feet long, was searching for food, along with “around 30 to 40 dolphins”.
They flew low to scare the shark and warn the surfer of the threat.
“I called mum to get me some footage of me surfing with the dolphins but after I caught a wave I looked down the beach and she was looking at something in the sky,” Ballard told Daily Mail Australia. .
‘I looked up to see two people on a plane and they were almost hanging over the side yelling at me, “shark, shark!” and pointing to a large shadow in the water quite close to me.
Bill Ballard is an experienced surfer and mistakenly believed that where there are dolphins in the water, there are no sharks (pictured with his partner)
A couple in a plane warned Ballard (pictured) of a ’20ft shark’ lurking near him, with the couple ‘hanging off the side yelling and pointing’
He heeded the warning and immediately began rowing toward shore.
But the pair’s brave warning had left the gyroplane too low and it couldn’t take in enough air to regain altitude.
The pilot tried to reach the sand, but the aircraft crashed into shallow water near the shore.
Ballard returned the favor and rushed to their aid.
Surprisingly, the pair were able to walk away from the accident and, to the surfer’s surprise, they were more concerned about their narrow escape from the shark.
“She kept saying, ‘That shark was so close to you, so close, and it was the biggest shark I’ve ever seen. It must have been about 20 feet long,'” Ballard said.
The small plane (pictured) crashed into the waves after warning Mr. Ballard
Mr. Ballard moments after the plane hit the water just offshore and swam away (pictured)
The pilot and passenger have spent years taking recreational flights along the South Coast and have always kept an eye out for dolphins and whales, Ballard was told.
They saw the pod of dolphins, then the shark, and when they noticed Mr. Ballard splashing into the predator’s path, they made a split-second decision to warn him off.
The pilot said he was very familiar with what different marine animals looked like from the air and had definitely not mistaken anything else for a shark.
“There were so many dolphins around and all the shadows in the water were more than I guessed…there’s an old story that the sharks aren’t around if the dolphins are,” Ballard said.
“The pilot and passenger were very brave to put themselves in harm’s way to save me from a possible shark attack.
‘I am very grateful. They were like guardian angels coming to save me.
He said the dolphins were acting “strange” as they swam back and forth as if trying to pull him toward shore.
Mr. Ballard’s mother, Janine, watched from the shore as the plane circled three times, dipping lower and lower to try to scare the shark out of the area.
She said that on the third lap, when the plane tried to get back up into the air, the plane struggled, changed course toward the beach, and then hit the water.
In a gyroplane, the rotor is not powered by an engine, but rather requires upward airflow towards the rotor blades to gain and maintain altitude.
Emergency services were called, but once they confirmed that no one was injured, they decided not to send anyone to the scene.
Janine and a few other beachgoers helped the couple with towels and food and took them back to town.
Ballard added that the dolphins began to act strangely when he was in the water and he believed they may have been trying to pull him toward shore.
“I’ve surfed with dolphins quite a bit and I’ve never seen them act this way,” he said.
“They kept sticking their heads out of the water right next to me and swimming back and forth like kelpies do when they push sheep. I almost kicked one of them how close he was.
Ballard said he was surfing in a pod of 30 to 40 dolphins and hadn’t noticed the huge shark.
These types of situations, and even dolphins attacking sharks to protect their young, have been documented in the past.
In 2014, long-distance swimmer Adam Walker was surrounded by a pod of 10 dolphins while swimming in New Zealand’s Cook Strait.
Walker claimed that they were protecting him from a great white shark that he had seen nearby.
And in 2004, New Zealand lifeguard Rob Howes and his 15-year-old daughter Niccy were surrounded by a pod of dolphins that held off a great white shark until they could be picked up by a boat.
