As a parent, it’s gut wrenching to see your kid fall over his own feet. Imagine seeing him surf over a 2.5 meter great white shark as you watch from the beach.
That’s exactly what 10-year-old Eden Hasson’s dad, Chris, witnessed after he zoomed into a a picture he’d taken of son Eden surfing and spotted a great white swimming just feet away from him.
And yes, it was in Australia, where all the animals from your nightmares reside.
While Eden was surfing with a group of friends and his sister, his dad noticed a dark shape in the water. He was about to call the group in when Eden took off to the left and “smashed it to the beach.”
“Just as he is taking off I see something out of the corner of my eye,” Chris said. He zoomed in to the picture, realised what it was and raised the alarm.
Eden on the other hand, hadn’t noticed anything (which he’s actually grateful for):
“When I paddled I saw [the shark] ahead just floating around, and when I came up to do the turn I thought it must have been just seaweed,” he said.
He said he felt his board hit something.
“I was 100 per cent sure it wasn’t a surfer because I knew who was out there.
“If I had known it was the shark in the wave I would have freaked out and fallen off.
I was lucky I didn’t fall off, because if I did fall off I would have hit the great white shark.”
And this picture, which the family are putting in the pool room, would have taken a much darker turn.