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.