Warning: graphic images included at end of article.
From Western Australia to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates to the Molokai Channel to northern Japan, Joanne Norman (Australia, 54, MSF bio here), a mother of four children, has set a new standard for pure grit with a gutsy performance with a successful crossing of the Tsugaru Channel yesterday.
It was a grueling 13 hour 17 minute crossing.
She was coached by Matt Duggan of Red Top Swimming Club who summed up her swim, “It was a tough swim, but she’s back on the boat and all is well.”
Norman said, “The conditions were tough. There were no favours out there. Tsugaru asked everything of me…plus more. I had nothing left in the tank, that’s for sure. I will go back to Molokai now to close out Oceans Seven.”
If that mission statement is not taking tough to the next level, I do not know what is.
Coach Duggan was, not coincidentally, with Norman on her ill-fated crossing between Molokai Island and Oahu in March 2025, a crossing where she had a deep chunk taken out of her stomach by the widely feared cookiecutter shark.
Incredibly, the horrific shark bite has not stopped Norman’s drive towards the Oceans Seven, “I was looking to do something significant since I turned 50. My husband and I had dinner at the White Horse Inn and knew at that point that I had to swim the Channel.“
That drive kicked off her Oceans Seven journey and a missing piece of her stomach – long since digested by a denizen of the deep – was not about to stop her.
She got it done.
The Shark Bite
Captain Michael Twigg-Smith described her swim across Molokai, “She started at 6:00 pm at La’au Point on the west side of Molokai [see her tracker here]. She had been swimming well for 10 hours. The conditions were flat and the start was great with a strong current pushing her from the start at 6 knots. She was pushed 1.8 km of the rhumb line later. She couldn’t swim 200 yards in 30 minutes for about 2 hours at one point between 9 and 11 pm. But then she started to make more headway. Around 4 am, relief pilot Kainoa Lopes was suddenly swinging the boat towards her.”
It was a sight no one in the channel swimming community wants to experience: an experienced swimmer, swimming quite well, heading straight for the boat. Norman said, “I knew exactly what hit me when it hit me. I was angry when it happened. I had saw the shark swimming fast from deep below and it hit me.”
What happened in the next moment can only be described as Aussie tough. “I grabbed the shark with one hand and threw it off me in the next stroke. I rolled over and saw a hole in my bathers. I didn’t feel it. Sal Aloisio was kayaking with me at the time and saw me. Sal told him that I had been bitten. It was so dark. Sal instructed me, ‘Go over to the boat’ so I swam over to the boat.”
Aloisio said, “She grabbed the little critter, only about a foot long, and threw it through the air. I saw it go tumbling and splash down.” He called the crew in the boat and they knew they had an emergency on their hands, in the dark at 4:00 am in the middle of the Molokai Channel about 15 kilometers from Oahu. She was on track to finish between 8:00 and 9:00 am.
This is where Norman innate grit and incredible mindset became so readily apparent. Norman remembers, “He was heavy fish. 30 centimeters, they pack a punch.”
She swam about 100 meters to the escort boat with specific instructions, “I told the crew, ‘Don’t touch me. I think something bit me. Shine the white light on me. We saw blood in the water, but not a lot. I asked, ‘How bad is it? Can I keep going?’ But Matt told me that I had to get out. I climbed out and stood up on the back of the boat. Matt looked at [the wound] again. He just said, ‘Turn around, don’t look at it, and lay down.
I was gutted. I was angry, shattered.”
With a gaping wound, bleeding, 3-4 centimeters deep, 6 centimeters across, Norman was still focused on her dream.
“The crew was amazing given their experience just a few days before with Paul [when he was bit by a cookiecutter shark in the foot]. They quickly packed it and wrapped towels on me.”
After getting bit by the shark at 4:00 am, the team was back in Ala Wai Harbor by 5:25 am when an ambulance took her to the Queen’s Medical Center. The crew recalls that Norman was calm and still talking despite the trauma that she just experienced.
Norman described the aftermath, “The staff was all looking at me with this open wound. It is perfectly round, a cookiecutter wound. I am on antibiotics and pain killers and will fly to Australia tomorrow where I will see a plastic surgeon. Perhaps it will require a skin graft, we do not know yet. I have four children, three were born by cesarean section. The shark bite in my abdomen is like cesarean pain.”
But her journey is not over, not by a long shot. Molokai remains on her horizon.
She promised, “It happened. It was a risk that materialized. But I will be back. I am finishing the Oceans Seven. This wound will be fixed and I will be ready to go. Coming back will be a mental challenge, but I want to close it out and get it done. I will wear my scar with pride; it is part of the journey. I am lucky that It was not a bigger shark. In the scheme in things, it could have been substantially worse and I have all my arms and legs.
We learned a few things. Bathers are not protective against the cookiecutter. We thought we had gone past the witching hour of 12 midnight to 1 am. And the Shark Shield was not effective against a cookiecutter.”
She gave great advice to others who will follow. “Channel swimmers have to be prepared to be uncomfortable for a long time. You need to have to tell yourself to do the hard things. Ultimately nothing is unachievable if you are prepared to work for it. It is hard work that will get you there.”
Photo above shows Mark Sowerby, Joanne Norman, Paul Leonard, and Matt Duggan in an unexpected reunion in Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu.
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