A shark may have bit a surfer over the weekend at Moonstone Beach, though authorities said it went officially unreported. 

It nibbled a wedge out of a foam board yesterday at around 10 a.m., a surfer who was nearby told the Outpost, its bite barely punching through the man’s wetsuit. The victim was rattled but uninjured. The other surfers in the lineup, somewhere around a half dozen of them, paddled back to shore and told other surfers getting ready on the beach to stay there. 

The victim said it was a 10-foot long juvenile great white, the surfer who spoke with us claimed, and he said the victim “fought” the shark, putting his board between him and it before paddling to shore.  

Incidents like these shouldn’t be called an “attack,” per the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Shark bites are an extraordinarily rare event, and it’s almost never because they’re hunting us; it’s usually because they’re “investigating unusual objects in their environment,” says the CDFW. (Like a surfboard.)

CDFW spokesman Peter Tira told the Outpost that no one reported the incident to the sheriff’s office or to CDFW. Skipping that step is a mistake, he said; the agency keeps bite incident data going back to the ‘50s, and keeping the record complete helps other beach-goers be aware of any potential dangers. They also could have determined what kind of shark it was by scraping some DNA off of the board. 

“But we don’t have that opportunity if it’s not reported to us,” Tira said, “or another public safety entity like the police or sheriff’s office.”

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment. The victim couldn’t be reached. (If that’s you, would you please consider contacting Dezmond Remington at dezmond@lostcoastoutpost.com?)