Man films dramatic encounter with shark at Victorian beach

A wave rider had a terrifying encounter with a shark at a beach on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula – and filmed the incident.

A wave rider has filmed a terrifying encounter with a shark on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

Roger Essig, 42, was mat surfing at Gunnamatta beach on Sunday morning about 200m from shore when he enjoyed a lull waiting for the next big wave.

When he realised he was quite a distance away, a shark, believed to be a sevengill, unexpectedly appeared.

“It was like a magic trick – all of a sudden there was a shark just there,” Mr Essig told NCA NewsWire.

“It was so shocking just to have a shark there without noticing it creeping up on me.

“That was the terrifying part. I just lost it, I went into panic mode.”

The shark appeared suddenly, as Victorian man Roger Essig waited for the next wave at Gunnamatta Beach. Picture: Roger Anthony Essig / YouTube

The shark, which he estimated at up to 1.8m long, was just a metre away when he first saw it before he gunned it for the shore.

A 360 degree camera mounted to Mr Essig’s helmet – intended to film him doing his new mat surfing hobby – instead captured his terror, showing the creature suddenly emerge and him paddling furiously away, yelling expletives.

“If I had saw it swim up to me I might’ve had a different reaction but just because it was that close all of a sudden, it was kind of incomprehensible,” he recalled.

Mr Essig said he went into panic mode. Picture: Roger Anthony Essig / YouTube

Mr Essig said for the first few seconds he feared for his life, his thoughts flashing to the surfer mauled by a shark in May at Tuncurry on the NSW mid-north coast where he surfed as a boy.

Thankfully, in this encounter the shark swam away, and Mr Essig made it to shore safely, if a little shaken.

Mr Essig paddled furiously to shore after the close encounter. Picture: Roger Anthony Essig / YouTube

His video has drawn scores of views and comments on social media forum Reddit, where he was knocked for how he handled the situation.

“There’s been thousands of comments now about how I did the wrong thing,” he said.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Stay relaxed and don’t thrash around, don’t cause a commotion’.

“For me it was impossible for my first encounter to be calm about it.”

Mr Essig says he is keen to get back into the surf despite the incident. Picture: Roger Anthony Essig / YouTube

He said in his 35 years of swimming in the ocean he’d only had an incident with a dolphin.

“It charged at me – which was terrifying as well,” he quipped.

Despite the drama, Mr Essig says he is keen to get back out into the waves, although he admits he will be more apprehensive about venturing into deeper waters.

“I probably won’t do that for a while unless there’s other surfers around,” he said.