Lucky escape for fisherman as 12ft crocodile leaps into his boat
A 12ft crocodile leapt into an Australian fisherman’s boat with its “jaws wide open” before a quick-thinking manoeuvre forced the predator back into the water.
Richard Brookman, 45, was confronted by the animal while fishing on Sunday evening at St Helens Beach, north of Mackay, in Queensland.
He had been in the area for about four hours when he saw the saltwater crocodile swim past nearby, before drifting back towards his boat with the tide shortly afterwards.
Mr Brookman said that he began to have the “eerie feeling that something was watching me” at about 10pm local time.
“I turned the headlight on and had to look up the creek and there’s these eyes coming straight for me,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“I’d seen how big he actually really was, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m in trouble’,” Mr Brookman added.
“I stood up to go back down to the back of the boat, then he went under and I thought, ‘This is not going to end well’.
“Within a blink of an eye he was on top of my boat and it was sliding down towards me, jaws open.”
Mr Brookman, an experienced fisherman, acted quickly to step over the animal and retrieve his anchor, forcing the reptile to overbalance and fall back into the water below.
“It was just sort of sheer luck then that he slid out,” he explained, adding the narrow escape had left him “numb” with shock.
“Even now I still see the flash of the croc going over the top of my boat,” Mr Brookman added.
Wildlife officers said they would search the creek to see if the crocodile was still there. If found, it could be relocated.
“To launch themselves at a boat near a boat or at a person, it’s not what we would call typical [crocodile] behaviour,” said Jane Burns, a senior wildlife officer at the the Department of Environment and Science.
“It is concerning behaviour, so it is definitely getting investigated and we’ll look further into this animal’s behaviour,” she added.
Demands for a cull
Crocodile attacks have become increasingly frequent in northern Australia, prompting demands for a cull of the animals.
Last May, a fisherman died after being savaged by a crocodile north of Cairns.
Two months ago, another fisherman disappeared in crocodile infested territory on Cape York, in far north Queensland.
Authorities in the state are weighing a proposal for wildlife rangers to be given the authority to issue fines to people who ignore safety warnings and take unnecessary risks around the animals.
