The death marks the 22nd fatal shark attack in Western Australia since 2000.
A man has been killed by what is suspected to’ve been a fifteen-foot Great White shark while spearfishing in the gorgeous blue waters of Horseshoe Reef at Rottnest Island there, a short ferry ride from the port city of Fremantle in Western Australia.
“The victim was on the surface at the time, about 20 metres away from the vessel,” Rottnest Island officer-in-charge Michael Wear said. “The injuries were quite horrific.”
The attack marks the twenty-second shark attack fatality in Western Australia since 2000.
Great White sharks have been protected in WA waters since 1997 and since 1999 Australia-wide.
In the previous one hundred years there were five, one, Bobby Bartle in 1967 inspiring the classic Goons of Doom song, The Great Shark of Jurien Bay.
Wild increase, yes?
RIP:
November 6, 2000 — Ken Crew, 49, a businessman and father of three, was killed by what witnesses and fisheries officials believe was a four-metre great white shark just metres from the shore at North Cottesloe Beach. He died within sight of the sand.
July 11, 2004 — Brad Smith, 29, was surfing near Gracetown in the Margaret River region when two sharks attacked him simultaneously. He did not survive.
March 19, 2005 — Geoffrey Brazier, 26, was snorkelling with two companions near the Abrolhos Islands when a shark estimated at six metres struck and killed him. Brazier was the skipper of the luxury cruise vessel Matrix, which was on its maiden voyage from Perth to Broome.
December 27, 2008 — Brian Guest, 51, went snorkelling for crabs with his 24-year-old son Daniel at Port Kennedy. A great white shark took him. His body was never recovered.
August 17, 2010 — Nicholas Edwards, a surfer from Busselton and father of two, was mauled and killed near the South Point surf break at Cowaramup Bay, about 300 metres offshore. It was his last day off before returning to work at BHP’s Leinster nickel operation.
September 4, 2011 — Kyle James Burden, 21, was bodyboarding at Bunker Bay near Dunsborough when a suspected great white bit him in half. He was killed instantly.
October 10, 2011 — Bryn Martin, 64, vanished during his morning swim at Cottesloe Beach. The only trace found was his torn swimsuit on the ocean floor. The coroner later ruled there was overwhelming evidence a great white shark had killed him.
October 22, 2011 — George Thomas Wainwright, 32, of Texas, was diving alone off a boat near Rottnest Island when a shark attacked him. He died at the scene.
March 31, 2012 — Peter Kurmann, a father of two, was diving from a boat roughly a mile off Stratham Beach south of Bunbury when a shark struck in overcast conditions. He did not survive.
July 14, 2012 — Ben Linden was surfing near Wedge Island, 135 kilometres north of Perth, when a great white attacked him. A bystander named Matthew Holmes rushed in on a jet ski in a desperate attempt to help. It was not enough.
November 23, 2013 — Chris Boyd, 35, was surfing off Gracetown in the state’s southwest when a shark killed him.
December 29, 2014 — Jay Muscat, 17, from Albany, was spearfishing off Cheynes Beach, about 65 kilometres east of the city, when a shark attacked and killed him.
May 31, 2016 — Ben Gerring, 29, was surfing at Falcon Beach when a great white seized his leg, severed it, and dragged him underwater twice. He died from his injuries.
June 5, 2016 — Doreen Collyer, 60, a lecturer at Edith Cowan University, was on a recreational dive out of Mindarie Marina between One and Three Mile reefs when a great white killed her.
April 17, 2017 — Laeticia Brouwer, 17, was surfing the Kelp Beds near Esperance with her father when a suspected great white bit into her leg. She died at the scene, her father beside her.
January 5, 2020 — Gary Johnson, a scuba diver, was exploring a site off Cull Island in the Recherche Archipelago near Esperance with his wife — a location they had dived many times before — when a great white shark killed him. The couple had been outspoken opponents of shark culling.
October 9, 2020 — Andrew Sharpe, 52, an experienced surfer who knew the risks and accepted them, was seized by a five-metre shark at the Kelp Beds about 15 kilometres east of Esperance. He was killed in front of friends in the water and families watching from the beach. His body was never found.
November 22, 2020 — Charles Cernobori, 58, a hotel worker in Broome, was bodyboarding at Cable Beach when a shark bit him on the hand and thigh. Police pulled him from the water. Paramedics worked to save him. They could not.
November 6, 2021 — Paul Millachip, 57, was swimming at Fremantle’s Port Beach when a shark killed him in front of teenagers watching from a nearby boat. His body was never found.
February 4, 2023 — Stella Berry, 16, jumped from a jet ski into the Swan River near the old Fremantle Traffic Bridge to swim with a pod of dolphins. A bull shark mauled and killed her.
March 10, 2025 — Steven Payne, 37, was surfing at Wharton Beach near Esperance when a great white shark killed him in front of his girlfriend. The couple had been caravanning around Western Australia on what they called the trip of a lifetime. His body was never found.
May 16, 2026 — A 38-year-old man was killed by a shark at Horseshoe Reef off Rottnest Island. Bystanders pulled him onto a boat and rushed him to Geordie Bay, where paramedics were waiting. Their efforts failed.
Diving off the west end of Rotto right near a massive sea lion colony
What could go wrong?
RIP fella
Yep I would have thought this is high risk jumping in out there.
Our WA state gov spends a shit load of money on international events, cornering a few celebs from the events and flying them to rotto for quokka photos which generally go viral for a minute or 2. I wonder if WA tourism have done a study that shows the financial benefit to Wa tourism of viral quokka shots versus WA shark attacks?
GWS are harder to get a selfie with than Quokkas for sure
1920 Australia population: 5.5 million
Number of surfers: 0
Number of wetsuits: 0
2026 population: 28.4 million
Number of surfers: heaps
Number of wetsuits: heaps
Additionally: “Researchers from Australia’s James Cook University (JCU) analyzed nearly 7,700 growth records covering 1,479 marine species from 1908 to 2021, and found declining growth performance from about 1908 onwards…Commercial size-based fishing practices, not temperature, are the primary drivers of the global pattern of declining growth, although climate change may amplify the effects.”
But yeah, solution is to kill more things in this ecosystem, obviously.
Only the ones that viciously seek out surfers and swimmers within 1km of the coastline.
Let’s protect the rest.
“Number of surfers: heaps”
“Number of wetsuits: heaps”
are these statistically exact numbers?
terrible logic mate, because there were a ton of shark attacks in the 20/30’s as people started swimming in the surf.
Of those 1479 species apparently in decline, it’s mostly great whites, tiger and bull sharks which kill people. Not sold that the population of those relates to increased deaths, but I laugh at the sentiment that they’re declining. Surely that would mean that protecting great whites was a failure.
Not very nice to call the man horrific now is it
RIP 🪦. Too sad.
https://youtu.be/qXfkr65JmjQ?si=YqENUZM56cttfxu3
Do you think they have the shark helicopter and the fisheries boat parked 30 ft from the surfers at margs during the surf comp for the fun of it .
Time for a cull of large sharks in Western Australia.
Not to remove these large predators from the ecosystem represents government negligence and abandonment of fundamental concepts of health and safety.
Need to find a more PC word than cull. Something like “reduction” of numbers.
Supposedly all the Greys have disappeared from offshore Cape Town . Are they still having any fatal attacks in that region ?
Chased out by a pair of clever Orcas, who have been hunting them and specifically removing their livers –
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/23/south-africa-gansbaai-marine-biology-apex-predators-orcas-conquer-great-white-sharks-seals-penguins-trophic-cascade-aoe
so are surfers or ocean swimmers still being killed by Greys or any other types? Or are shark attacks down in the Cape Town area? It’d be interesting to see the numbers
The last fatal great white shark attack in Cape Town’s direct waters occurred on January 12, 2010 – more than 16 YEARS ago
Maybe stay in your lane ? Exposing other peoples surf spots for profit
Yes, THE BOOK is doing well, thanks!
Many of the locations in the book surfEXPLORE: Discovering New Surfing Locations Worldwide had never been surfed by anyone –
For others, like Gabon and several locations in Pacific Indonesia and The Philippines, I was specifically asked by local people to invite more surfers to come and visit to surf their waves, as they can use the visitor spending as an important part of their local economy –
“Secret Spots” don’t do anything for the local people that actually live there – it’s just selfish white people who want to see poor brown people remain poor, so they and their rich, white western friends can enjoy their cheap surf holidays, year after year – complete bullshit.
Are you getting it?
If not, maybe you need to purchase a copy of my book and read all 60 000 words, then you would have a better understanding of the impact “spear-point” adventure travel has on distant locations, seldom visited by anyone for any reason –
I think the Balinese might disagree with you there . Surfing “tourism” fucked their island.
“Selfish white people” (like yourself) exploiting their waves for profit(or book sales)
Surfing may have been an important component of the Balinese tourism industry in the 1970’s but it has long been surpassed by visitors to the island who have nothing to do with surfing at all.
Today, the surfing tourism business provides jobs for hundreds of Balinese, from surf schools and coaches to filmers and sponsored professional surfers – I don’t think they want to go back to being rice famers, fishermen and seaweed cultivators, as they had to do during the pandemic – much better conditions and more money to work with international visitors.
The person that did the most to “fuck” Bali with surf tourism is of course, Alby Falzon who made a home movie called “Morning of the Earth” that made him millions of dollars in profit and sent tens of thousands of Australian surfers to Bali and the rest of Indonesia, yet he seems to get a free pass as the primary “Agent of Exploitation” of the island of Bali –
Why is that exactly? He wasn’t the first person to go to Bali in a surfing context, he just followed others and exploited the place for a massive personal profit –
I dunno.. it’s a big list but it’s big coastline. He was spearfishing not far from Cathedral Rocks. Quick drop to deep water, seal colony etc.
Seppos are loving their MAGA https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Hey Mikey… How you liking those high gas prices? How about the those 3700 stock trades Trumpy has completed this year? Another republican war with no end in site? When those unredacted files being released? Already 100mil in tax payer dollars going to golf outings in his second term alone (1.5 years). You must be over the moon aye? Are we winning now?
That is such a wild fuxin story. I just saw it. High speed algorithmic trading straight out of the Oval Office. Bizarre shit.
Also, these divers who died in the Maldives all looked like professional models. What a disaster for the Maldives. Also very sad
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62e0p7rd2ro
I’d gladly pay for trumps golf rather than illegal aliens helth care, food stamps, etc.
well that was a fun read
“Only a Surfer Knows the Feeling.”
That’s you!