{"id":208244,"date":"2025-10-08T04:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T04:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208244\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T04:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T04:38:08","slug":"surfer-bitten-twice-by-shark-after-a-seal-reportedly-used-him-as-a-decoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208244\/","title":{"rendered":"Surfer Bitten Twice by Shark After a Seal Reportedly Used Him as a Decoy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-306407\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-306407 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/shark-670x388.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Unsplash\" width=\"670\" height=\"388\"  \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-306407\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Unsplash<\/p>\n<p>        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/favicon-surf.png\" alt=\"The Inertia\" width=\"30\" height=\"30\" class=\"lazyload\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Most <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theinertia.com\/surf\/10-shark-attack-beaches\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">shark bites<\/a> happen by accident. Though Jaws has led to the popular narrative of sharks as man-hunting, killing machines, one prevailing theory states that a number of shark encounters are simply the <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/10.1098\/rsif.2021.0533\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">result of mistaken identity<\/a> \u2013 cases in which sharks mistake humans for seals or other prey. But as one Australian man found out recently, some seals may be purposefully deceiving sharks into actually making that mistake.<\/p>\n<p>The incident occurred offshore from Kangaroo Island, located southwest of Adelaide, in South Australia. A man in his 50s was surfing on the south side of the island, when, around 1:00 p.m., he was bitten by a shark. It appears that the bite was a result of a seal using the man as a sort of human shield.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA surfer has been taken to hospital after receiving two shark bites from a large Bronze Whaler at \u2018The Sewer\u2019 surf break, D\u2019Estrees Bay,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/p\/Shark-Watch-SA-61570439528808\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">wrote Shark Watch SA on Facebook<\/a>, based on information from a public submission. \u201cAccording to the report, a Bronze Whaler was chasing a seal around the bay when the seal used the surfer as a decoy and the victim was bitten twice by the shark.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As ABC news <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2025-10-07\/shark-attacks-man-seal-uses-as-decoy-kangaroo-island\/105863812\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">reports<\/a>, police said the man drove himself to a nearby hospital for treatment, with South Watch SA describing the surfer as being last seen in a \u201cnon-life-threatening condition.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Unsplash Most shark bites happen by accident. Though Jaws has led to the popular narrative of sharks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1246,79,4814,8207,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-208244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-seal","11":"tag-shark","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}