A Saturday afternoon shark attack at San Mateo County’s Montara State Beach has left a surfboard ruined, but the surfer himself was able to avoid getting bitten, and the beach was closed off for the remainder of the weekend.

Albany resident and surfing enthusiast Jens Heller took his family to two Pacifica beaches Saturday, but left both quickly, because the conditions weren’t good for surfing. So he continued driving southward to Montara State Beach, a decision that nearly proved quite fateful. Because as the Chronicle reports, Heller had only been in the water for about 10 to 15 minutes, and was a mere 100 yards from the shore, when a shark attacked his surfboard and left several chomp marks on it.

“I was sitting on the board, actually, and I felt something under my foot,” Heller said in a video interview on the scene. “It kicked me off the board. I looked back and just saw this big-mouth just grabbing onto my board.”

“It kicked me completely off the board,” he continued. “I just remember being in the water looking back, seeing this black eye and the teeth of the shark. Then I just tried to grab my board as fast as possible and come back in. There were two other guys out that were close by that also pedaled back in, and one of them said it was about a ten-foot shark.”

You can see some of the photos of the collateral damage, and fortunately, only the surfboard took any of that damage. “I kind of panicked, obviously,” Heller added to the Chronicle. “I thought, ‘That’s it. I will not get away from this.’”

California state parks officials confirmed to KGO that they were closing the park for 48 hours after the incident was reported.

"At approximately 2 pm today, State Park lifeguards and peace officers responded to a non-injury shark incident that occurred approximately 100 yards offshore at Montara State Beach in San Mateo County,” park officials said in a statement to KGO. “A surfboard sustained damage consistent with that of a shark bite. Lifeguards immediately cleared the water and posted the beach with shark closure signage, effective for 48 hours from the time of the incident. California State Parks would like to remind visitors that sharks are an important part of the coastal ecosystem and that interactions between humans and sharks are rare."

KGO adds that the surfboard is beyond repair, and Heller plans to hang it on his wall as a memento.

According to KPIX, Montara State Beach was expected to reopen at 2 pm Monday.

Related: Humboldt Surfer Attacked By Shark, Survives After Kicking the Fish In the Head [SFist]

Image: Powerlines Productions via Facebook

Eyewitnesses say a person was attacked by a shark and pulled under the water Sunday morning at Point Reyes’s Wildcat Beach, and despite an expansive search effort, the victim has still not been located.

A frantic, multiple agency search involving the U.S. Coast Guard, National Park Service, and Marin County Sheriff’s Office is underway at Point Reyes National Seashore’s Wildcat Beach  in Marin County, as NBC Bay Area reports of a suspected shark attack in those waters Sunday. Nearly 24 hours later, the male victim still has not been located.

According to NBC Bay Area, the Coast Guard was alerted at around 10:40 a.m. Sunday to a “person who was attacked by a shark and pulled under.” And troublingly, KRON4 adds that those eyewitnesses say they saw “blood in the water where their friend was last seen.”

Officials have not confirmed whether it was a shark attack. The official Twitter account of Point Reyes National Seashore posted just before noon Sunday that “Point Reyes National Seashore, with support from cooperating agencies, has an active search and rescue in the Wild Cat beach area. A person is reported missing in the water.”

ABC News has pictures of the search and rescue mission, which continued into Monday morning. According to KRON4, the effort involves “jet skis, helicopters, UTVs and fire engines from surrounding agencies.”

Per NBC Bay Area, the search was still underway as of 5:45 p.m. on Sunday. We do have a Monday morning update from that outlet saying “authorities suspended the operation just after 9 a.m. Monday,” though it’s unclear why the operations was suspended.

Update (October 2, 1:54 p.m.): KGO clarifies that the Coast Guard has suspended their search, though the other rescue crews continue their operations. "The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search in the frigid waters this morning, but a ground search is being conducted by first responders from the NPS, the Marin County Sheriff's Office and the Marin County Fire Department, and the Stinson Beach Fire Department," the National Park Service said in a Monday statement.

Related: San Mateo County Beach Closed After ‘Aggressive Shark’ Incident [SFist]

Image: NPS.gov

A stretch of Bean Hollow State Beach near Pescadero was closed Wednesday morning, after a report of “aggressive shark behavior” that left one kayaker rattled but unharmed.

A Tuesday incident of “aggressive shark behavior” has led officials to close off a portion of a San Mateo County beach near Pescadero, according to the Bay Area News Group. The incident was reported by a kayaker, who was unharmed, but authorities were concerned enough to close the beach.

“Earlier today, we received a report of aggressive shark behavior in the vicinity of Pebble Beach, just south of Pescadero, in state beach jurisdiction,” the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office tweeted late Tuesday afternoon. “A kayaker had a close encounter with a shark, but thankfully emerged unharmed.”

KRON4 reports that as of Wednesday morning, that beach was closed. A sign was posted at the beach’s entry path saying “Shark Incident, Do Not Enter.” There is no further information on the beach’s reopening.

This Pebble Beach is obviously not to be confused with the Monterey County community of Pebble Beach that has the famed golf course. The San Mateo County Pebble Beach is a part of the larger Bean Hollow State Beach, on a coastal area about a half-mile west of Pescadero.

San Mateo County has seen previous shark incidents. Surfers encountered a great white shark in Pacifica in August 2020, and a group of great white sharks was spotted in Half Moon Bay in July 2019.

Related: Humboldt Surfer Attacked By Shark, Survives After Kicking the Fish In the Head [SFist]

Image: David Clode via Unsplash

It looks like the recent great white shark migration into the Bay Area is very real, and at least one came into San Francisco Bay on Saturday where it got hooked on a fisherman's line and proceeded to tow the fishing boat around for about two miles before the shark could be freed.

Captain Joey Gamez of Golden Gate Sport Fishing tells his tale to KPIX/CBS SF, and he says he's never experienced anything like this in the twenty years that he's been fishing in the Bay four to five days a week. Gamez was in his boat with six other fishermen about a half mile out from Alcatraz when he hooked the great white, and he describes the force as "like hooking into a Volkswagen that was a hundred feet deep and just trying to hold on to the rod and reel."

Gamez fought the animal for over an hour as it dragged the fishing vessel around the Bay, still with the hook in its mouth. Gamez, who drives in from Tracy to take sport fishermen out on these excursions, estimates that the shark was six to eight feet long. He says that while he's hooked sharks large and small before — between three and 400 pounds — he's never caught a great white before, and it put up quite a fight.

Ultimately Gamez was able to free the fish, and took some dramatic footage of the ordeal that you can see below.

Great white shark sightings were made by multiple pilots in recent weeks over the San Mateo County coast, with one sighting claiming to have spotted four sharks together near the beach in Half Moon Bay.

Experts say the sharks tend to return to the Bay Area, and particularly to the area around the Farallon Islands, to feed in the late summer and early fall after migrating out to the deep ocean.

Sightings of great whites in the Bay are rare but not unheard of. A family of tourists shot the video below in October 2015 after spotting a great white feeding on a seal near Alcatraz.

Surfers and ocean swimmers are being cautioned that there have been several sightings of great white sharks near the San Francisco Peninsula — and this is the typical time of year that sharks show up in the area from their migration to the deep ocean.

Multiple pilots have reported seeing the large marine beasts from the air off the San Mateo County coast, as ABC 7 reports. And as NBC Bay Area reports, four sharks were seen from the air in recent days about 40 yards from the beach near the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay.

Sharks tend to come to shallow water in search of warmth, because they are sensitive to temperature, experts say. And as the Chronicle explains, great whites come to feed around the Farallon Islands in late summer and fall, after making annual trips out to deeper waters.

A separate great white sighting happened last month off the Sonoma coast, near Bodega Bay, which halted some county sheriff's deputies from doing some water training.

Back in March a jet skier at Mavericks shooed a shark away from a group of surfers, and brought the surfers back to shore before anyone could get bitten.

There are roughly 65 shark attacks worldwide each year, and many of those happen to surfers. As Swim Outlet explains, shark experts tend to believe that most shark attacks on humans are cases of mistaken identity — people in wetsuits paddling on surfboards bear a resemblance, from below, to swimming seals, which are sharks' prey of choice.

If you spot any sharks, you're encouraged to contact local law enforcement — and get the hell out of the water.

Related: Jet Skier Saves Mavericks Surfers From Enormous Great White Shark

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.

On Friday, October 16, the U.S. Coast Guard spotted a cluster of 20 or so great white sharks swimming about 100 yards off Ocean Beach and Pacifica. Most of the sharks were between 10 and 15 feet long, but a few "really big" individuals were up to 18 feet long. "This is the first I'd heard of near-shore aggregating in such an urban area," Mary Jane Schramm, spokeswoman for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, told SFGate.

"An unusual number of juvenile white sharks under 10 feet long have been observed this year, likely associated with the unseasonably high water temperatures along the coast," David McGuire, Director of the San Francisco shark conservation group Shark Stewards said din a press release. Earlier this month tourists on Alcatraz were treated to the rare sighting of a shark feeding on a seal inside San Francisco Bay.

"But an 18 foot shark is very large, mature shark and can cause considerable harm to seals or humans," he added. The larger, mature sharks are typically in the waters off the Farallon Islands, Año Nuevo or off Drakes Bay, feeding on their preferred prey of elephant seals and sea lions.

Despite their natural presence in our waters, shark attacks on humans are still very rare. However, because of the unusual concentration and proximity to the coast, McGuire cautions surfers, swimmers or kayakers for the time being.

"I might swim and surf somewhere else for a few days."

No word on whether or not this shark gang's rivals were also spotted nearby.

After seeing a fairly fuzzy view of the bloody aftermath of a shark preying on a seal next to Alcatraz Island last weekend, via a tourist's cell phone camera, we now get a much clearer view of the scene via a much nicer camera mounted on an Alcatraz Ferry.

As noted earlier, sightings of Great White sharks have become more frequent in the Bay recently, likely as a result of the warm El Nino waters driving them north. However an expert says this was, "the first recorded predation event I know of in the San Francisco Bay." That is, of course, not to say it's never happened before, but still.

The only thing missing from one this one is sound, and that kid going, "Holy crud! That’s the awesomest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

[h/t: gCaptain]

Previously: Bloody Video: Great White Shark Spotted Off Alcatraz Eating A Seal

Part of the Alcatraz myth was that the supposedly shark infested Bay waters ensured no escapees made it to the mainland. Well now here's video proof of that.

On Saturday, tourists on Alcatraz were greeted with a bloody scene when they witnessed a great white shark feeding on a seal just off the ferry dock. A large pool of blood appears in the video, taken by Chris Shindler, and shortly a shark makes its appearance, thrashing near the surface of the water. Some seal guts can be seen floating away when it all ends. "That's the best thing I've ever seen in my life!" says a young boy whose world was just rocked.

"This is the first recorded predation event I know in the San Francisco Bay," said David McGuire, Director of the San Francisco-based conservation group Shark Stewards and research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, in a press release. "It definitely looks like a white shark, about 8-10 feet from the phone video sent to us."

While great white sharks are usually associated with the open ocean, particularly the Farallon Islands, 27 miles offshore, they have been known to occasionally find their way inside the San Francisco Bay.

"For me its pretty exciting and a sign that the health is returning to the San Francisco Bay ecosystem," said McGuire. He also reassured that the risk of a shark attack on humans is always low, and adds, "I suspect this shark is well fed."

Get. Out. Of. The. Water. Why? Well, it seems that someone spotted a shark swimming along the coastline just off of Stinson Beach, prompting authorities to shut down the beach to the public. CBS5 reports, "Golden Gate National Recreation officials told CBS 5 that they received two 'reliable' shark sighting reports on Monday. As a result, officials said they made the determination to close the beach for 5 days." Although Great White Shark attacks are relatively common in the area, insofar as shark-to-human attacks go, it wasn't know what shark, exactly, was spotted.

24-year-old San Francisco resident Adrian Ruiz was killed by a tiger shark while surfing off the coast of Mexico yesterday, making this the second shark-related death in the past week. According to AP, "Ruiz bled to death on Monday after a tiger shark bit his right thigh, leaving a 15-inch wound, the Guerrero state Public Safety Department said in a statement."

Similar to the shark attack that took the life of triathlete Dave Martin, Ruiz was pulled ashore, but then alter died due to serious blood loss at a nearby hospital.

The fatal shark attack occurred at Troncones on Mexico's coastline, "about 325 yards from shore." The shark that attacked Ruiz is reported to weigh as much as 660 pounds.

Is there anything more annoying that a college student on Spring Break? Probably not.

But as luck would have it, a recently released great white shark made its way from the Monterey Bay Aquarium to the warm waters just south of Baja. Electronic tracking tags attached to the male shark show that the little guy took just six weeks to travel down to Mexico.

Although, sadly, word is that the shark just passed Cabo San Lucas--vile Spring Break hot spot for the hot, healthy, and tanned youth of America--we certainly hope it makes a quick return to the shores of Cabo where tasty morsels of tequila and lime-infused flesh await him just near the surface of the water.

You can follow the shark's progress by visiting this nifty animal tracking site and clicking on "Juvenile white shark."

Go get 'em, Sharky!