Cronulla’s “shark lady” Melissa Hatheier has rejected offers to sell the rights to the video of her daring actions in the Oak Park rock pool.
Cronulla Real Estate, where Ms Hatheier is an agent, opened the floodgates by posting the video, taken by her daughter Shannon, on its Facebook page..
Ms Hatheier said this week she was amazed by the “absolutely incredible” reaction.
“One website Buzz News has had over eight million hits,” she said.
“I have been contacted by media in the US, I heard I was on the front page of a paper in Germany and I have the BBC calling me tonight because they want to have me live on their morning show.
“It’s gold for a real estate agent when we pay a fortune trying to get our face out there.
“But, there are also a lot of snakes out there.
“We have had lots of offers from agents trying to purchase licensing for the video, which would mean people having to pay to watch it.
“We have been offered an upfront fee plus a 60:40 or 70:30 split on sales.
“Shannon is the only one who could agree, because she took the video, but I said, ‘Let’s not do that, because it will take the whole flavour away’.
“Let it go around the world for free – it’s a nice story, and that’s how we want to leave it. I didn’t do it to make money.”
Shannon Hatheier, a law student, videoed the encounter from the side of the pool.
Ms Hatheier was alerted to the shark by her mother, who swims daily at Oak Park.
“I was just trying to catch a little shark,” Ms Hatheier said at the time. “If it had big teeth I wouldn’t have done it”.
“I started to swim around him and he became a bit stressed and started to knock his head on the rocks. I was feeling sorry for him,” she said.
“Everyone was saying, ‘What do we do?’ Mum even rang 000 and the police came.
“I herded the shark into the shallows and then I just sort of jumped on him and put my knees on his fins. I then grabbed him around the neck so he couldn’t swing around and bite me.”