Shitty weekend for surfers in North Carolina and in Cape Town…
It sure is hard to keep up with the news sometimes. A couple of shark attacks over the weekend in North Carolina, a south-eastern US state, lit up the wires and… now… a couple more, this time in South Africa.
Two attacks by suspected Great Whites, both on surfers.
First, around dusk on Friday, at Lookout Beach, Dylan Reddering, 23, was bitten on the right side of his body. Dylan kicked the shark away only to became stuck in a current while trying to swim back to shore.
In a little twist, his dad was one of the first to respond to the attack. He heard an emergency siren indicating there had been an incident at sea and rushed out to respond.
“I didn’t know it was my son. When I got to the (NSRI) station I was told there’s a shark attack. The boats were already out. A friend called me (and said) it was Dylan. My friend said: ‘Dylan is okay, don’t worry.’ You have no idea what those words meant.”
The following day, 19-year-old Caleb Swanepoel was surfing at Buffels Bay thirty k’s away, when he was attacked. He lost his right leg.
Last month, Cape Town surfer Mathieu Dasnois surrvied a hit by a four-metre white.
Which all begs the question, would you still go surfing in South Africa? Or are shark attacks, now, like Margaret River or Reunion, just part of the game?
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Buffels Bay and Lookout are no more in Cape Town than Byron is in Sydney. That said, it appears there are a lot of sharks in South Africa.