WA teens Luke Pascoe and Conner Shirley reflect on near-death great white shark encounter off Albany

Luke Pascoe knows it won’t be easy for him to get back in the water, but for now, he’s just happy he managed to get out. Relaxing at his Albany home with his leg in a brace and a smile on his face, Luke could laugh about his run-in with a colossal great white shark near Mistaken Island on Monday last week. But he is acutely aware of how close it came to ending his life. The 17-year-old was discharged from Albany Health Campus on Saturday, almost a week after his best mate Conner Shirley carried him into the hospital with chunks of flesh missing from his legs. His emotions spilled over when he saw his dive gear on Saturday night, his tears catching him off guard as everything he had been through caught up with him. Sitting down on Sunday afternoon with Conner — who he credits with saving his life — Luke told the Advertiser his encounter was more of a shark “incident” or “accident” than an attack. The shark, which the pair estimated at 5m long, was after the banded sweep he had attached to his dive belt. If it had been targeting him, he would not have stood a chance. “This would be a very different conversation, probably with me not included in it,” he said. The two Albany teenagers have gone spearfishing along the same stretch of Albany’s coastline many times over the years, but on that fateful day last week, they tried a slightly different area. After shooting his second fish of the day — a magpie perch — he surfaced to hear Conner shouting something about a “massive shark”. “In my mind, I’m going, ‘s..., what is he talking about?’” Luke said. “So I looked down and sure enough, there was the shark and she was swimming straight in front of me. “I felt she was a little bit close for comfort, so I kind of prodded her off with my spear. “She swam away for a second, came back, did two big kicks of her tail and went straight for the fish.” In the process of getting the fish, the great white’s teeth opened up several deep lacerations on Luke’s lower legs. The worst injury was his left knee, where his patella tendon had been severed, leaving him without full function of his leg. After retrieving his spear gun, so he had something to defend himself with, he gritted his teeth and swam the 50m back to the rocks. “Conner was already on top of one rock that the waves were crashing on,” Luke said. “I handed him my gun, I took his hand, and he ripped me up onto the rock and said, ‘did she get you, are you injured?’ “I looked down at my legs, I couldn’t see the full injury, I could just see that the wetsuit was torn and there was a laceration and I said, ‘yes, I can’t walk, I don’t know how we’re getting out of this’. “So he chucked me up on his shoulders and piggybacked me almost a kilometre to the beach and then back to the car. “It was pretty crazy.” Luke said he would not have been able to haul himself out of the water without help. Once he was on the rocks, Conner used their dive equipment to apply a tourniquet to each of his legs. Though the left knee ended up being the more serious injury, a wound on Luke’s right leg was bleeding more heavily in the immediate aftermath. As they made their way across the rocks and back to the car, they quipped about how the scars might help his love life. On arrival at the Albany Health Campus emergency department, Luke — in the piggyback position — asked if anyone knew how to suture. They had tangled with a great white and lived to tell the tale, and the jokes were coming easily to them as the adrenaline flowed. But they knew just how lucky they had been. Luke said his first thought when he saw the shark was that he was “about to die”. Even with the injuries he sustained, a few centimetres could have made a world of difference. “If it had grazed my torso instead or anything like that, then it would have been pretty much game over,” he said. Luke called his parents from Albany Health Campus on Monday, giving them the bad news but assuring them he was OK. He was finally back at home with them in McKail on Saturday. His patella tendon has been reconnected and he hopes to regain full movement of his left leg in the coming months. As a passionate free diver, he has a deep love and respect for the ocean. When he isn’t working at Albany’s Ocean and Paddock fish and chips shop, there’s a fair chance he will be underwater trying to catch his own meal. While other shark attacks have sparked calls for the fish to be hunted down or the species culled, Luke and Conner have come to the shark’s defence. “The way I feel about sharks is it is definitely their territory,” Luke said. “It’s their home and we are merely guests in it. If we get chomped, that’s our own fault for getting in.” They believe a combination of rough conditions, murky water and the fish they had already speared led to the shark inadvertently injuring Luke. “We basically rang the dinner bell,” Conner said. “I had a fish, Luke already one and then he got the second. “There was already blood in the water and the oil and the smell of the fish would have just brought it in. “It was just like a free feed.” It’s a view that Luke’s father, Lloyd — himself an experienced diver — agrees with. “Sharks are lazy fishermen, they’re opportunists, and it was after the fish that Luke had hanging off him,” Mr Pascoe said. “It’s just unfortunate that Luke had that fish hanging off him rather than away from him.” They both want to return to spearfishing, but they will take some lessons from last week’s encounter. Instead of attaching fish to their dive belts, they will use float lines to keep their catch away from them. They also plan to invest in a personal shark deterrent and avoid spearfishing when visibility is low. For all their humour and spirit, both teenagers admit it will be challenging to get back in the water. “Yeah, I’ll have some emotions there, it will be a struggle,” Luke said. “I’m going to take my father on the first dive back. “I think there will be a mental block, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get past it and get back in there.”