Ever wondered what it would look like if a pal was hit
by a Great White? Well, here’s a little poem of the
sea – just-released phone footage of yesterday’s second Great White
attack near Margaret River.
It isn’t entirely pleasant viewing, although the surfer, Jason
Longgrass’s survival, lack of substantial wounds and excellent
post-attack interview do lighten the mood.
“Shark! Oh my god… holy fuck!… he’s gone…” says one spectator
before, “No he’s swimming, he’s swimming, come on mate chopper’s
coming back. Chopper’s coming back.”
Dead pilot whale towed off the site of yesterday's
(second) Great White attack…
The holy trinity of contest crowds, the year’s
annual salmon run and dead whales littered everywhere sure did
create a vibrant environment for sharks around Margaret River. Two
hits on surfers by Great Whites in one day, neither fatal.
There was a little chatter, yesterday, about why the State’s
Department of Fisheries hadn’t removed that damn wounded pilot
whale which had swam through the Lefties lineup, beached itself and
died. I pointed out that Lefties ain’t the easiest joint to get to
and putting a boat close enough to shore to attach ropes to the
dead leviathan wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
Well, they did it. Whale gone. Towed off the beach, taken to
Gracetown (where, in between North and South Points there’s a boat
ramp) loaded onto a trucked and disappeared. Not surprisingly, two
Tiger sharks (remember those?) and a Great White followed the boat
back around the corner, and past the seal colony, and into
Cowaramup Bay.
Beaches remain closed until six pm, local time, although the
closure might be extended.
A Regulation 44 closure notice remains in place for the
Gracetown area between North Point and Ellensbrook. This means
beaches and waters up to two kilometres out to sea cannot be used
by divers, surfers and swimmers. In addition, Fisheries has advised
additional caution between Kilcarnup and North
Point.
Now, here’s a question.
If you…knew… how many ten-foot-plus Great Whites were
around, whether in WA or maybe around your neck o’ the woods, would
you accept the odds and still surf?
Gabriel Medina: “I don’t feel safe in this
kind of place!”
By Derek Rielly
Italo Ferreira and Gabriel Medina thrilled to be in
Margaret River's thriving ecosystem.
Yesterday’s two hits on surfers by Great Whites a click
or so from the contest there sure did sour Gabriel Medina
and Italo Ferreira’s Margaret River experience.
Gabriel told his six million followers on Instagram, “Today they
had two shark attacks on a beach close to where we’re competing. I
do not feel safe training and competing in this kind of place,
anytime anything can happen to one of us. Hope not. Leaving my
opinion before it’s too late!”
Italo, who is the current equal world number one and Bells
winner, helpfully posted one of those shark sighting maps. It ain’t
for the squeamish.
“Two shark attacks in less than 24 hours here in Australia,
detail, just a few miles from where the event is being held,” wrote
Italo. “Very dangerous do you not think? even so, they keep
insisting on doing steps where the risk of having this type of
accident is 90%, so I ask: is not the safety of athletes a
priority? We already had several alerts. Life goes beyond that! I
hope it does not happen to any of us. I do not feel comfortable
training and competing in places like this!”
Are Italo and Gabriel right? Should the tour pack up its bunting
and Joe and the gang and leave?
How do the locals feel about it? Are the two attacks really
unprecedented? Is it unsafe to dive into those azure waters and
bask in the poem of the sea?
Jay Davies, who is thirty-one years old and has lived in
Yallingup all of his life and who two weeks ago was being lit up by
eight-foot shorebreak tubes (“I saw fifty sharks that day, the
water must’ve been stirred up”), says that “big sharks are sighted
every day. It’s not different, just a bit of a bummer two guys got
a little bit chomped yesterday. But, you know, it’s salmon season.
There’s a lot of fish running around and there’s definitely big
sharks feeding around ’em. It’s sketchy, but it’s the natural thing
around here.”
The timing of the WSL event, says Jay, is a little odd, howevs.
“It’s pretty funny the WSL puts the contest on in this time frame
and then they freak out that there’s all this activity. Everyone
thinks it happens all-year long but salmon season plays a big part
of it.”
Jay says there’s definitely more sharks around than when he was
a kid (“We weren’t hearing about thousands of sharks being sighted
every day”) although it hasn’t changed his behaviour.
“It was in the back of my mind yesterday, I was surfing with one
other person not too far from the stretch where people got
attacked, but I didn’t let it phase me.”
A lot of the WSL guys come here and fucking hammer Cobblestones
all day long so I actually can’t believe it’s the first attack
there. JAY DAVIES
That said, he ain’t in a hurry to surf Cobblestones again.
“There’s that one little stretch with five different breaks and
the last three fatal attacks have all been in that area. There’s a
seal colony at the end of South Point, about six hundred metres
from Umbies and Cobblestones, so you’re really dancing with danger.
A lot of the WSL guys come here and fucking hammer Cobblestones all
day long so I actually can’t believe it’s the first attack there. I
don’t surf there much. I get really spooked. It’s really deep water
and it feels like a bit of a shark highway. The wave is fun, it
gives you a great ramp and it has a lot of power, but you’re
usually trying to find someone to surf with. Jack Robbo is always
trying to find someone else to hit the ramps with him.”
The former pro surfer turned real estate agent, Mitch Thorson,
is philosophical about the threat, however real, of attack.
“That’s our deal. Not a day goes by without a story about how
someone was surfing somewhere and a mini-sub cruised by. But you
either give up surfing or you go surfing and know they’re out
there. That’s our deal. That’s our reality.”
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Stay: The famed Volcom Pipeline house!
By Chas Smith
A price so amazing you'll be shocked!
Great value is a wonderful gem in this world
and very rare. It feels that, at least most the time, when
something is very inexpensive then it is also junky. Conversely, if
something is well-made/well-thought/filled with quality then it
costs a lot of money. But there are times when inexpensive and
quality unite and these are moments to remember.
Like right today. Volcom is renting its Pipeline front Gerry
House for you and/or your friends to stay/sleep/party. Travel + Leisure magazine breaks down
the square feets and let us read together.
On a recent trip to Hawaii for the Volcom Pipe Pro, we got
to check out the house firsthand. It was packed to the gills with
professional surfers, but sorry everyone, they don’t come
included.
Instead, visitors looking to book will find an expansive
first floor with floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors that open up
straight to the sand. The open kitchen and large dining area make
it the perfect spot for a sit-down dinner for 14 as the sound of
the waves crash outside and the cool ocean breeze flows
in.
Walk up the short flight of stairs and you’ll be on the
home’s second floor. There, you’ll find two bedrooms, both of which
open up to decks that once again provide brilliant views of
Pipeline. Each bedroom also comes complete with its own
bathroom.
On the home’s third floor you’ll find two master suites that
each come with private bathrooms as well. Again, both bedrooms open
up to a large deck. This deck, however, provides the most expansive
views of the beach as you’re perched at the highest point in the
home.
Beyond providing visitors with the coolest place to lay
their heads at night, the home also comes complete with all the
accoutrements you’d need to have an epic beach vacation including
coolers, beach toys, chairs, umbrellas, and body boards.
It certainly does sound fantastic, though I don’t why the writer
is apologizing to potential guests that the professional surfers
don’t come included. It sounds fantastic and expensive. But guess
how much it costs?
Really guess.
Ok now I’ll tell you. Sleeping for one night in the phantasmic
energy of Bruce Irons and Gav Beschen costs……
…$1000 per night!
So inexpensive I can hardly take it. For the math-challenged
this means you could stay with those 13 other people sitting around
the perfecto spot for a sit-down dinner for $71 dollars a night
per.
Hours after a Great White attack at Cobblestones, a
surfer is hit by a White at nearby Lefthanders…
I doubt if it’s a stretch to call today’s twin attacks
by Great Whites in Margaret
River unprecedented. Five or so hours after
Argentinian surfer Alejandro Travaglini was airlifted from
Cobblestones, a reef peak near the site of the Margaret River Pro,
after being hit by a four-metre Great White, another surfer was
been hit by a White, this time at Lefthanders.
That name ring a bell? It’s the same joint Brad Smith was
surfing in 2004 when he was hit by a pair of Great Whites.
Denmark (WA) surfer Jason Longgrass, who is 41, reckoned he
was “having a ball” at the beach, which was closed because of the
earlier shark attack, when the Great White, estimated at
four-metres long, hit his board. Hard to blame him for being out.
It was a classic south-west afternoon: offshore easterly winds, a
four-to-six-foot swell, air temps scratching the high-twenties.
“It was bee-lining straight at me, I went to slap the water and
by then he made a sudden acceleration and then just nailed the
board,” Longrass told reporters. “I don’t normally surf the place
but it was uncrowded. I didn’t know why. I heard there was a shark
around and I thought, yes, there are sharks in the ocean, kept
surfing and the boat’s calling everyone in and I hung out there for
a little longer than everyone else and…whammo…”
Longgrass’ minor leg wounds were treated at the scene by
paramedics.
A few more details have come through about the earlier
attack.
“It swam under a couple of guys and came around and bit a third
person… It was a large shark and from the way it was behaving,
it would have been a white pointer. All the other surfers swam to
him, helped him get away from his board and leg rope and helped him
get on a wave, and luckily [he] caught a wave onto the
reef. The surfers that helped him in got tourniquets on his
legs as soon as they got on the shallow reef, and then other people
came down from the carpark and put him onto a surfboard and carried
him up to the carpark.”
Despite the twin attacks, it ain’t entirely surprising. There’s
a ton of people in the water. The Western Australian Salmon, which
can hit nine kilos, and is a favourite of sharks, are spawning and,
for whatever reasons, the coastline is dotted with beached pilot
whales, including one at Lefthanders.
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Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by
@theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros