Bodyboarder critical after hit at Lighthouse Beach, Ballina. Attack at Lennox. Gromfest suspended…
Yeah, so, another surfer has been hit around Byron Bay, that zeitgeist-y place you to go to escape the madness of city life. All those rainbows, all that leashless longboarding, miles and miles away from Sydney’s rotten urbanity, but now rivalling Margaret River as the sharkiest joint in Australia.
Here’s the latest attack:
A 32-year-old bodyboarder, Matt Lee, was surfing with his pals at Lighthouse Beach, Ballina, around 10 when he was hit on the legs by a four-metre (close enough to 15-foot) Great White.
Pals helped him to the beach, paramedics stiffed the blood (it took ’em an hour to stabilise him), and he’s been airlifted to Gold Coast Hospital. He survived emergency surgery but remains in a serious condition.
(Who remembers a fatal attack at Lighthouse? Yeah, 2008, 16-year-old bodyboarder Peter Edmonds hit… twice.)
Back in February, Japanese surfer Tadashi Nakahara died when he was hit by a suspected Great White at the next beach. Out of nowhere, Tad was paddling back out when the (maybe) White hit him from below. Took off both legs. That attack happened a day after another surfer was attacked a couple of clicks up the coast at Seven Mile Beach, Lennox.
Last September, a swimmer died in waist-deep water when he was hit by a suspected Great White just near the Pass in Byron.
Today, one day after the attack at Lighthouse, a surfer was knocked off his board by a shark at Lennox Head. Uninjured, but fuck.
All beaches are now shut between Tallows and Ballina which ain’t great news for the two million or so kids at Skull Candy’s Gromfest at Lennox which has been suspended.
The Department of Primary Industries has authorised a permit for the great white, which is still hanging around (see video) to be destroyed.
Humans have useful tools, like brains, to protect ourselves from predators. We have no issue killing animals to eat, or killing animals that get in the way of the animals or crops we like to eat. But when it comes to protecting ourselves from being eaten, we get all empathetic – but only to sharks. Not bees, or flies or lions or bears or mozzies or speeding drivers or other creatures that can do us harm. “It’s their habitat” argument contradicts common human practices and a rudimentary understanding of evolution. 1) Priority 1, find a way to keep humans safe; 2) Priority 2, minimise long term damage to other species as best you can. Had a mate taken years ago. Sharks can fuck off.
I’m sorry but no-one called Sarah Cumming should be reporting on anything serious ever.
or Katrina Blowers….. https://twitter.com/katrina…
If you have any actual experience with a fatal shark attack in your own community you’d probably think differently. One happened where I live a couple of years ago and no one. Not his family, not any locals, in fact no one who actually knew him advocated culling sharks. It’s their habitat, we’re just visitors.
Or is that just the reflex action of a family, community, riven with grief?
fuck sharks! kill all man-eaters!
Imagine the sea with only little clownfish swishing around and happy turtles scrambling up the beach to lay their wonderful little eggs! What a world!
The endangered question seems to have answered itself. If you eat fish you can have no moral quibble with the killing of non-endangered sharks such as the clearly abundant White.