Fisherman gets up close and personal with four-metre great white shark off Victoria coast

The four-metre shark circled for close to two hours

A day out on the water has turned into an unforgettable wildlife encounter as a Geelong fisherman came face to face with a four-metre great white shark.

Kevin McLaughlin was fishing near Anglesea and Torquay when the enormous shark surfaced beside his boat and lingered for hours.

Speaking on Sunrise on Thursday, McLaughlin said the shark appeared calm and inquisitive, circling the vessel for close to two hours with no signs of aggression.

“It just turned up to the boat, and we just let it hang around us for the next two hours. It was a good experience,” McLaughlin said.

“It wasn’t actually really aggravated or anything, it was just checking us out pretty well.”

During the encounter, McLaughlin tried tossing the shark a mackerel but said the animal showed little interest in food, instead focusing its attention on the boat itself.

“It actually wasn’t hungry; it was just swimming around the boat pretty well, checking us out. I chucked out a fish earlier, and it just completely ignored it, sank to the bottom, and was more interested in checking us out,” he said.

Vision of the moment McLaughlin made contact with the shark has prompted concern from viewers, but he insisted the interaction had been misunderstood.

He said rather than patting the shark’s nose, he was “pushing it away”.

“It was potentially going to put some teeth marks in my boss’s boat. It was really docile. It looks a bit more extreme than it is,” he explained.

The close encounter comes after weeks of heightened concern around shark incidents along Australia’s east coast, sparking renewed debate about whether shark numbers are on the rise.

McLaughlin said his experience does not suggest a sudden surge in local populations, saying he doesn’t believe there’s “any real population boom down here”.

“We’ve been fishing out there pretty hard for at least 20 years, and this is the first time we’ve seen one off Anglesea, Torquay; that sort of Surf Coast area,” he said.

While some have questioned whether feeding sharks could encourage them to linger in popular areas, McLaughlin believes the isolated incident is unlikely to change behaviour.

“A once-off time like this, I don’t think it’s probably really going to make a difference,” he said.