VIA YAHOO!
Adam Strange (Adamstrange.tv)
By Breanne L. Heldman | Movie Talk – 8 hours ago
Sometimes it’s awe-inspiring and sometimes it’s just plain sad when reality becomes stranger than fiction. Few know that as well as the family of Adam Strange — who died in a shark attack Wednesday off the coast of New Zealand.
The award-winning television and short film director was 46. He leaves behind a wife, Meg, and baby daughter.
“The family are grieving the loss of a glorious and great father, husband and friend,” Strange’s family said in a statement released to the New Zealand Herald. “We are in deep shock and are still trying to contact overseas family members, so discretion and privacy would be appreciated until the family are ready to make any further statements.”
Strange’s first theatrical short film, “Aphrodite’s Farm,” had entries in 10 different film festivals and won the Crystal Bear award for Best Short Film at the Berlin Film Festival just last year. He began his career in 1995 making television commercials and eventually was a finalist in the global Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival and the London International Awards.
On his website, Strange shared that when he gets a spare five minutes, “I like to make a fruit smoothy, surf some big waves out on the West Coast, point my skis down a mountain with Meg, haul my mountain bike up and down a few hills, drink some Pinot while scratching away at a film script, make a long skateboard, carve down a steep hill on it with some friends, read an Elmore Leonard novel … take an arty snap or two with one of my cameras or go see some live music.”
According to NBC World News, Strange was swimming about 200 yards offshore from Muriwai Beach, just west of Auckland, when the attack took place. Police and lifeguards quickly jumped into inflatable rescue boats and started shooting at the 12-14-foot long shark — believed to be a great white — which “rolled over and disappeared,” New Zealand Police Inspector Shawn Rutene said.
“All of a sudden there was blood everywhere,” witness and fisherman Pio Mose recalls of seeing the attack. “I yelled at him to swim to the rocks. There was blood everywhere. The water was red. It was pretty scary.”
Shortly thereafter, the shark took Strange’s body out to sea. Mose claims he saw three or other four sharks soon arrive at the scene, but said he’d never seen sharks there before this incident in the three years he’d been fishing in the area.
“It’s awful – it’s scary like a nightmare to me,” Mose said. “All I was thinking was I wanted to jump in the water and help but I didn’t want to get attacked by a shark too.”
Authorities have shut down Muriwai Beach until further notice.
Original post here:
http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/filmmaker-killed-shark-attack-zealand-184048622.html
VIA – NPR
Man Killed By Shark Off New Zealand Beach
by Scott Neuman
People grieve outside New Zealand’s Muriwai Surf Lifesaving Club after the fatal shark attack at Muriwai Beach on Wednesday.
Authorities think it was a great white shark that was responsible for a fatal attack on a swimmer Wednesday off a beach near Auckland, New Zealand — the first such incident in at least four years.
Adam Strange, a 46-year-old filmmaker, was swimming about 650 feet off Muriwai Beach on Wednesday afternoon when witnesses on shore saw the attack by what authorities estimate was a 12- to 14-foot great white.
New Zealand news website stuff.co.nz quotes fisherman Pio Mose as saying that he saw Strange swimming nearby when “all of a sudden … we saw the shark fin, and next minute, boom, attack him then blood everywhere on the water.”
Mose says he called emergency services while his friend ran to get help.
The swimmer “was still alive, he put his head up, we called him to swim over the rock to where we were,” Mose said. “He raised his hand up, and then while he was rising his hand up, we saw another attack pull him in the water.”
Police were dispatched to the scene and fired on the shark from an inflatable boat, authorities said.
The shark “rolled over and disappeared,” police inspector Shawn Rutene said.
Strange was a filmmaker and The New Zealand Herald, quoting a bio on his website, says one of his short films had been in 10 international film festivals and had won an award for Best Short Film at the Berlin Film Festival.
In the bio, Strange described his love of the outdoors, saying, “When I get a spare five minutes, I like to make a fruit smoothy [and] surf some big waves out on the West Coast …”
There have been only 14 known fatal shark attacks in New Zealand since records began around 1937, says Clinton Duffy, a shark expert at the country’s Department of Conservation.
“In the last 20 years we have been averaging two shark incidents, where the shark actually bites someone, a year.”
“Those are generally on swimmers and generally result in fairly superficial flesh wounds,” Duffy said.
Duffy said the last death was in 2009, when a kayaker was mauled by a great white, but it’s not clear whether he had drowned prior to the attack. Before that, the last death was in 1976.
Original post here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/27/173050969/man-killed-by-shark-off-new-zealand-beach
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