There are few things that can so emphatically drive home a certain existential perspective than looking a colossal five-metre, 1.5-tonne, prehistoric Great White Shark in the eye.
When Jamie Culver saw the monolithic sea monster drifting in that looming, terrible and elegant way that sharks do towards his boat floating a few clicks on the shore side of the continental shelf off Port Stephens, he thought it could have been a submarine.
The great mass of the beast came into view, and the lifelong angler still couldn't quite wrap his imagination around it. His boat was just over six metres, but this mythic leviathan looming out of the Ulyssean sea conjured up a wave of emotion.
"My head couldn't figure out what it was," Culver, who goes by Port Stephens Fishing online, told the Newcastle Herald, "And then it all came into view, and I realised it wasn't a submarine, it wasn't a whale - that's a Great White Shark. I wasn't prepared for it."
Culver, who has been fishing the local waters for as long as he remembers, said the encounter felt like something out of a thriller film - the feeling it conjured up of some dreadful mix of curiosity and excitement and wariness. Everything felt heightened.
The footage could never do the moment justice.
The three mates on board - Culver and fishing buddies Shane Scott and Ben Carter - could only watch as the giant lingered around their boat until dark. They were careful about their encounter; they didn't want to upset the creature that Culver was sure could rock the boat if it felt like it and took in the natural awe.
"It stayed with us for an hour," he said, "It just swam around us and sat beside the boat; it was incredibly nimble, but it just went around peacefully and gracefully."
The boys threw a couple of fish from their catch, which the shark picked up, but their lines didn't bother it. Culver suspected that the electromagnetic fields created by the tech on board probably drew the shark in.
It was a moment that put things in perspective, Culver said. He knows how strange it sounds to say it, but he feels like he's a different person, having experienced the encounter.
"When you see an animal that is that size and power, like an apex predator, it makes you realise your vulnerability," he said, "It was just so enormous."
Culver, like any angler, is protective of his fishing patch but is effusive in his passion for protecting the prehistoric world that few get to see in the open water. Until you experience it, he says, it's easy to think of the ocean as a big blue desert - but it's anything but.
For the past several days, he has been inundated by calls from around the world of people trying to secure and license his footage.
"We have one of the most amazing ecosystems off our coast," he said, "Second to none. Orcas, humpbacks, we saw loggerhead turtles that day, dolphins, sea birds, and the most majestic great white shark. That shark would have travelled the world's oceans; it shows how interconnected our oceans are."
The vibrant life beyond the harbour and knowing that this shark was, in all likelihood, drawn to his boat by the pull of electromagnetic fields is why Culver is so opposed to the federal government's 1800 square kilometre offshore wind zone from Port Stephens to Swansea.
The declared area will start 20 kilometres from the coast at Port Stephens, about nine kilometres further offshore than first proposed, and more than 35 kilometres from the coast at Swansea, as the site of hundreds of wind turbines. Culver calls the plan "criminal" and, notwithstanding his support of renewable transition, believed the build would be detrimental to the ecosystem he wants to protect.
"I'm a social worker by trade," he said, "You won't find a bigger lefty than me. I'm a social worker, I grew up in steel city, the biggest lefty you will meet. I'm voting for Peter Dutton next time because I'm not going to stand for that out there; that's how crazy this is.
"I'm all for renewable energy; I have 56 solar panels, I have a battery, and I'm getting a Tesla. I'm not against renewable energy, but we have to figure this out because you can't do this."
Offshore wind farm developers were more interested in working in the southern end of the Hunter zone than the more environmentally sensitive northern end, one industry executive told the Herald in October, and more than a dozen Australian and international offshore wind companies have shown interest in the project, but Port Stephens locals have been vocally opposed to the plan, viewing it as a big city government dumping turbines further up the coast in their environmentally sacred back yard.
"Sharks are attracted to electromagnetic fields," Culver said, "So when you put that wind farm out there, and it's going to have 300 turbines, and all interconnected with 66,000-volt power lines between each one underwater ... and they're going to put that in the most amazing ecosystem on planet Earth. How is that possible?
"It's nothing short of criminal. People don't know because they don't go out there, but we see it all the time: how alive that place is. It's buzzing.
"People use that word 'NIMBY', like, not in my backyard. That's probably what that shark would say; don't put it there."
