A 10-year-old boy has been captured surfing over a 2.5-metre great white shark in the New South Wales Hunter region.
Eden Hasson was out with his father, Chris Hasson, for a twilight surf at the northern end of Samurai Beach earlier this week.
Mr Hasson was standing on rocks taking photographs of his son when he noticed something large in the water.
“I see a big dark shape and about to call the small group in,” the real estate agent wrote on Facebook.
“Eden takes [off] on a left and smashes it to the beach.
“Just as he is taking off I see something out of the corner of my eye. I keep shooting and after he finishes and starts paddling out I zoom in on the second photo and see he’s just done a backhand snap on a 8 foot great white sharks head.”
The series of photographs show Eden less than a metre away from the shark, which appears to have rolled over onto its back.
“Lucky he didn’t fall off,” Mr Hasson wrote.
“This photo is going straight to the pool room. Not every day you get a photo surfing over a big white.
“Check out its mouth. It’s rolled over having a good look at his yummy yellow new wetsuit.”
The post has been shared close to three-hundred times since it was posted yesterday and attracted hundreds of comments.
“We are a surfing family,” Mr Hasson told the Newcastle Herald.
“Eden is a talent 10-year-old competitive surfer…Eden rode the way to the beach. I quickly zoomed in on the second photo and was shocked when I saw the image.
“Eden was way half was out and I called everyone in. I showed them the photo and everyone was in awe laughing.”
Eden said he did not know the dark shape near him was a shark.
“When I took off I thought I saw something and when I went to do the first snap off the top I hit something and thought it was seaweed,” he told the newspaper.
“Then when [Dad] called me in I thought it must be a shark because there was a big school of fish we saw.”
Mr Hasson said the experience has not deterred him or his children from going back into the surf, instead it’s created greater awareness of what’s out there in the ocean.
“I surfed the area for 30 years and sharks have always been there and always will be and there’s largely never a problem.”
