Ben Gerring
The surfer Ben Gerring, who was twenty nine, has died in a Perth hospital overnight. According to Gerring's family, he had just found out his girlfriend was pregnant and was “particularly nervous about the threat of sharks and and would not have entered the water on Tuesday if he had known about a shark sighting nearby earlier that day.” | Photo: Facebook

Shark Attack Surfer Dies in Hospital

Ben Gerring, the surfer attacked by a Great White on Tuesday, has died in a Perth hospital…

The Western Australian surfer, Ben Gerring, who lost part of a leg in a Great White attack on Tuesday, died in a Perth hospital overnight.

Gerring, who was twenty nine, was attacked at Gearies Beach, an hour-and-a-half south of Perth.

The ABC reports,

The WA Department of Fisheries said during the week that the damage to Mr Gerring’s surfboard indicated he was attacked by a great white shark.

Mandurah Boardriders Club President Brian Williams said he arrived at the scene as fellow surfers dragged Mr Gerring onto the beach.

“By the time they got him to the beach somebody had already applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding and they were just trying to do CPR to get him back breathing,” he said on Wednesday.

Mr Williams helped stretcher Mr Gerring up to the ambulance.

“It’s pretty harrowing seeing somebody you know lying there motionless, hoping that everything’s going to be OK,” he said.

Mr Williams said Mr Gerring had lived in the area all his life and his mother had travelled in the ambulance with him to hospital.

“He grew up as a Mandurah boardrider, he’s been here all his life, so he’s well-known, he’s a very good surfer,” he said.

Earlier, the Gerring family had appeared on Channel seven news and revealed the surfer had just found out his girlfriend was pregnant and was “particularly nervous about the threat of sharks and and would not have entered the water on Tuesday if he had known about a shark sighting nearby earlier that day.”

On Wednesday, WA’s department of fisheries set up a drum line and hooked a big White, which died on the line. 

Gerring’s death is the first fatality in Western Australia since December 2014 when a spear fisherman was killed by a fifteen-foot Great White in the south coast town of Albany.

Click here for  list of shark attack fatalities in WA since 2000. 


How could you say no to this instructor?
How could you say no to this instructor? | Photo: The Great Steve Sherman

Just in: Joel Parkinson retires!

Maybe! To teach private surf lessons at new boutique hotel!

It is truly amazing what a person can learn from an inflight magazine. Did you know, for example, that you can spend three prefect days in New Zealand? Or that the longest tunnel in the world stretches 57 km? Or that (ex?) pro surfer Joel Parkinson can be hired to give private surf lessons at a new beach hotel in Australia?

A write-up featuring some of the best hotels in the world discusses the glamorous Halcyon House. Let’s read:

Opened last May in a converted 1960s seaside motel, the 21-room Halcyon House is bringing high style to the scruffy surfers’ paradise of Cabarita Beach, an hour and a half south of Brisbane. The property, set back from the sand behind a grove of palm-like pandanus trees, brims with eclectic flea-market finds, boldly patterned upholstered walls, and a palette that skews toward mariniere-style navies and whites. Work up an appetite by taking a private lesson with pro surfer Joel Parkinson…

Boom. If Parko is on call for the high style Halcyon House then there is no way he can continue to compete.

Yeah?

Anyone in the service industry will tell you that the first rule is making sure you are always available to fill hours and the second is that the customer is always right.

True?

I got instantly fired from my only service industry job.

Still. Can you imagine a worse life than teaching surf lessons? These must be very bleak days on the WSL. Very bleak indeed. But since he is giving them, shouldn’t we go and learn how to do proper cutbacks?

Or do you think you’re above a few pointers? From the world’s most stylish surfer/handsome instructor?

IMG_3039 (1)

Mr. Hitler bronzing his buns after three hours of making an ass out of himself in the lineup.
Mr. Hitler bronzing his buns after three hours of making an ass out of himself in the lineup.

Opinion: The adult learner must die!

Or maybe just be sent to Tasmania with all other adult learners.

As you know, I am currently in San Francisco and I’ll be damned if the weather is not a most pleasant 70 something degrees Fahrenheit (22.7ish for my Australian and European friends). The sun is shining with not a hint of that classic biting cold wind. The bum urinating on the telephone pole seems to be enjoying himself and the one who asked me for a quarter, then a dollar, was chipper even after I turned him down both times.

See that chubby white manboy across the street? Yes, he is headed to an open floor plan tech startup with 40 million dollars in series B funding but guess what he left at home? His black North Face fleece! Or maybe it’s just tucked into his over-the-shoulder satchel.

In any case, last night I had a lovely dinner, an adventurous take on contemporary American cuisine, with even more wonderful people. The conversation, as it does, turned to surfing at some point and the struggles in learning. The bobbing around helplessly, going over the falls, getting in the way of everyone, fin cuts, leash tangles, face getting exfoliated by sand.

And it made me wonder. What kind of sick bastards are we, the ones who stick with it?

Not including those who live in warm water places with enough waves (Hawaii, parts of Australia etc.) learning to surf is perverted masochism. There is nothing even remotely fun about it. It is awkwardness coupled with pain coupled with more awkwardness. And helplessness. And looking like a complete spastic in front of a beach packed with spectators.

I thought back to when I first learned to surf and suppose I was so young that I stunk at everything. I couldn’t hit a baseball with any sort of consistency or a three-pointer. I played quarterback but was so small that I couldn’t see over the center so would just heave the football downfield before getting bone-crunchingly sacked. I was as good at surfing as I was at anything which is to say bad.

So I guess I wasn’t really a sick bastard. Childhood, in and of itself, is a sort of perverted masochism.

But what about the adult learner? How miserable must his life on land be to stick with something so absolutely impossible to learn? How driven must she be in order to spend the minimum 500 hours in the water required to poke down the line with a poo stance? Miserable like Hitler? Driven like Pol Pot?

Yes, the adult learners, the ones who really stick with it, are unstable should be locked up with the key thrown away. They are far too dangerous for society to contain. Or maybe they can all just go live and learn together on Tasmania. I heard, at my lovely dinner from a wonderful person, that 1 in 4 Tasmanians is directly related to a convict.

(A very funny classic from our friends at Australia’s Surfing Life)


“Giant Great White” at Angourie!

"It launched like a missile," says surfer/shaper Will Webber… 

Did you know that Greg Webber, the wavepool inventor and shaper of bananas for Kelly, has a fabulous younger brother called Will?

Will lives in Angourie on Australia’s far north coast where he shapes surfboards, some of which bear the famous curved Webber pedigree.

Examine here. 

Two days ago, while checking a surf spot called Spookies, next to the more famous, though less exciting, Angourie Point, Will says he saw a “fifteen-foot” Great White breach “seven foot in the air.”

On his Facebook page, Will wrote: Just saw a 15 foot Great White breach off Spookies !!!!! Fucken raddest thing I’ve ever seen !!!!!!

Will tells the story in an interview with the Daily Examiner,

“I just went to check the surf and sat down for about 10 seconds; it was probably about a kilometre out and the thing just jumped out seven feet in the air.

“This thing was definitely hunting, so I told a guy who was just going out that I saw a giant Great White out there, and asked him to tell the others. One guy came out of the water and he had a cut on his head and it was bleeding, but the others stayed out.”

“It was about a 15 footer and had its whole profile from the top. It came out like a freight train, if that thing hit you you’d be in half.”

Shaking and in awe of the predator’s sheer power, Webber rushed down to notify the four surfers who were in the water at the time.

“This thing was definitely hunting, so I told a guy who was just going out that I saw a giant Great White out there, and asked him to tell the others. One guy came out of the water and he had a cut on his head and it was bleeding, but the others stayed out.”

Webber said he had always wanted to see a shark, just not when he was in the water.

“I’m definitely not surfing today and I’ll be surfing very close to the rocks from now on. It’s burnt into my brain. I’ve always imagined but now I know what it looks like… it was like a missile.”

Meanwhile at Ballina, an hour or so north, and the current shark capital of the world, four Great Whites were just spotted near surfers at North Wall.

Read here. 


shark leash
From Surf Stitch: "The MODOM Ambassadors including Jack Freestone, Taj Burrow, Craig Anderson, Kalani David, Noah Beschen, Alana Blanchard, Tom Whitaker, Mark Mathews. We have also had a number of tour guys like Kelly Slater test out the product during Bells." Did anyone here get attacked by a shark? Well? It works! | Photo: Modom

Report: Do Anti-Shark Leashes work?

Let's ask a shark scientist!

Does Modom think you’re an idiot? If so, they might be right.

First news of their new “shark deterrent leash” dropped on Stab/Stitch‘s website a couple months back.

Titled This Shark Leash Is The Most Desirable Surf Tech In The World Right Now! the piece was a particularly disingenuous piece of marketing.

“Modom didn’t give us a cent for what you read here (yes, we’d tell you). We’re just fucking thrilled to have something that’s potentially effective at discouraging sharks.”

Very nice. So much concern. Totally impartial. No conflict of interest there. Surfstitch definitely isn’t looking to earn a buck middle-manning the product. Oh no, this is truly a humanitarian effort. Using the power of magnets to save life and limb!

Modom’s magnet leash sprung from a license agreement with SharkBanz, a subsidiary of SharkDefense, which is a New Jersey based company founded by Eric and Jean Stroud in 2001. SharkDefense is the proud owner of numerous shark repellent patents. In addition to magnets, they also sell a line of Batman style shark repellent spray.

Considering the company employs numerous “scientists,” it’s worrying that there is a total lack of peer review or access to any of their “research” data.

Sure, they have some “research” posted on their site, but it amounts to little more than a collection of data gathered by others, with no indication of how they proceeded with real world testing.

Lucky for us there are concerned citizens willing to double check claims for them.

Take a gander at the following video. Does an excellent job demonstrating the efficacy of the Sharkbanz’ magnetic wonder.

Oops!

The shark targeted and ate the magic magnet.

What’s going on? Does this mean it doesn’t work?

Nope. Still totally works, they claim. 

Sharkbanz are not designed to prevent sharks from eating visible bait. They have a hierarchy of senses and can override the electrical sense in the event that visible bait is present. Again, Sharkbanz are meant to deter curious sharks from biting a person while in investigative mode, not prevent them from eating bloody fish bait.

An interesting claim, kind of surprising considering The testing was performed using baited fake legs with the leash cuff connected. Their heavily edited videos purporting to demonstrate efficacy use the same method.

But what do I know? I’m no sharkologist.

All this is just arm chair speculation based on lack of evidence and contradictory marketing material. I really need to talk with someone in the know. Ideally that would be a person who studies the creatures for a living and doesn’t have an economic interest in promoting the product.

So I emailed Dr. Carl Meyer, member of the shark and reef fish research team at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

I’m yet to see any rigorous testing on Sharkbanz carried out by independent scientists, and I am fundamentally skeptical about the ability of these devices to deter sharks from biting people. Decline in magnetic field strength is governed by the inverse square law. Thus even a couple of inches from your Sharkbanz the magnetic field is extremely weak – weak magnetic fields do not inherently repel sharks. Basically, the device has a very small magnetic footprint – most of your body will not be within this footprint.

The inverse square law states that “a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity.”

Confusing, yeah?

That basically means that the magnetic field gets exponentially weaker the further you get from the magnet. This graphic helped me wrap my head around the concept.

Dr Meyer continued, “I’ve seen some research data showing aversion to solid state magnets by small sharks held in close proximity to the magnet. The problem is that field strength is declining exponentially with distance from the magnet, so to a propagate a strong magnetic field over an area the size of a human body would require a tremendously powerful magnet (=large magnet) at the field center. For full effectiveness, we would also need to understand the minimum magnetic field strength threshold for shark repulsion, and design a field that was at least this strong immediately surrounding our body. This threshold will likely vary as a function of shark species, size and motivational state.”

Basically, even if it works (it doesn’t), the Modom leash will only protect the foot your leash is attached to. The other leg, your arms, your head, they’re still up for grabs.

Worrying information considering the fact that marketing rhetoric has compared the leash to seat belts and helmets. Two things which actually provide real, demonstrable, benefits as opposed to a placebo effect based on specious voodoo science.

Dr Meyer agrees.

The biggest problem I have with devices like Sharkbanz is that people are clearly buying them with the belief that they will be either entirely protected from shark bites, or at least less likely to be bitten. Neither of these facts have been scientifically proven, and there are fundamental reasons why these devices are unlikely to deter a shark from biting you. These devices are in a grey area, exploiting peoples fears, without being held to the high standards required of other safety devices (i.e. that they actually work). The burden of proof of effectiveness is on the manufacturer, and in my opinion, they are a long way from demonstrating effectiveness in preventing shark bites. 

Of course, there’s no getting through to some people. Just like we saw a million morons harnessing the power of magnets to enhance their balance, there will no doubt be a rush of halfwits and cowards all too eager to drop $250 on a leash with a magnet attached.

Pretty crazy price point, especially considering it’s just a normal leash with a neodynium magnet attached. The same type of magnet you can buy on Amazon for under twenty bucks.

It’d be damn easy to rig one of those things to a leash, maybe wrap a cord around it and fashion a necklace. It’d not work just as well, and you could spend the balance on whatever it is that dumb dumbs blow their dough on. ICP concerts and lottery tickets, I suppose.