Competition was halted on the final day of the World Surf League’s New Zealand Pro at Raglan after a photographer was bitten on the left foot by unidentified sea life.<\/p>\n
WSL tours and competition vice president Renato Hickel confirmed photographer Ed Sloane had been taken to hospital with minor injuries.<\/p>\n
“We activate the code red when it\u2019s a sea life attack on a surfer or a photographer. This time it was our beloved water photographer and thank God he\u2019s in good spirits. He\u2019s well considering what happened,\u201d Hickel said on the WSL broadcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has small puncture wounds and he\u2019s already in the ambulance on his way to hospital. We\u2019ve put the event on hold and we\u2019re going into a low tide so the next call we\u2019re going to assess when to resume this heat between Yago and Italo will be at 12 noon for a possible 12.35pm start.”<\/p>\n
The event restarted shortly after 1pm.<\/p>\n
Sloane later provided a statement to the World Surf League to thank those who had come to his aid. <\/p>\n
“Massive thank you to our water patrol for the quick response, our medical team, and all the support from our teams for the immediate assistance I received,” he wrote, adding he was receiving medical attention and doing OK.<\/p>\n
Hickel said he was unsure whether the animal involved was a sea lion or a shark, though he added the doctor was “inclined to think it was a sea lion instead of a shark”.<\/p>\n
Hickel said there would be full surveillance for wildlife, including jetskis, drones, and spotters.<\/p>\n
“The surf is absolutely pumping,” he said.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including the terrifying moment a paraglider\u2019s hit by a plane in mid air, and Peter Burling scores a win over Team New Zealand. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Competition was halted on the final day of the World Surf League’s New Zealand Pro at Raglan after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9001,42,43,2558,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-444182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-hamilton-waikato","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-surfing","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}