Margaret River? Another day, another shark
hit…
Knocked, swiped, hit, bit. Another day in
Margaret River, I suppose.
At around one pm today, Rob Bruce, who is sixty, was paddling
out to Main Break, the site of the probably gone-forever Margaret
River Pro, and “knocked” off his board by a shark. (Species
unknown.)
From Perth Now.
“I wasn’t a long way from shore, maybe
only 100m, and the shark just hit me from my right side and knocked
me off my board,” Mr Bruce said. “I could only see the back half of
it but I could see the fin and the tail fin so I definitely knew it
was a shark. It thrashed around a bit but the whole thing only
lasted five seconds. I was terrified and screaming and trying
to alert surfers I could see in the distance.”
Mr Bruce said he immediately paddled in
and was followed by some of the 15 other surfers in the
water.
After watching from the shore for an
hour as others returned to the water he decided to get back out
there but admitted he did not feel entirely comfortable.
“I was shocked,” he said. “It felt
like I’d had five cups of coffee and it was hard to relax when I
got back out there.”
The impact of the shark’s hit left a
small crack in Mr Bruce’s 2.5m board. He credits the size of his
board and the black and white stripes as possibly keeping the shark
away after the initial blow.
“The black and white stripes are meant
to deter sharks,” he said. “Maybe it changed it’s mind at the
last second. It might have saved me.”
Mr Bruce said until recently he had only
seen a shark out surfing about every 10 years. In the past two
weeks he has seen three out in the surf.
He said the protection of great white
sharks was something that needed to be looked at along with smart
drum lines and and GPS tagging.
Yesterday, authorities closed beaches from North Point to
Ellenbrook after a teenage surfer was “swiped”
by a twelve-foot White at South Point just across the
bay from another Margaret River Pro site, North Point.
The closure created a ruckus among local surfers who were very
unpleased the coastline north of the Box was going to closed, with
fines threatened etc, just in time for the arrival of classic
autumn swell.
From Perth Now.
“As far as the surf goes tomorrow, I
can’t speak for everyone, but a couple of guys I have spoken to, we
will be going surfing,” shaper Mat Manners said. “I’m not sure
where we will go yet. It doesn’t seem like the Government is
going to do anything any time soon, so what do you do? Do you
just stop what you are doing and wait for them? It is my livelihood
as well.”
The State Government all but ruled out
drastic action to manage shark numbers last week, despite a shock
decision by world surfing’s governing body to cancel the Margaret
River Pro.
Mr Manners said there had been an “awful
lot” of white shark sightings off the local beaches
recently.
“How many people need to be taken before
the Government does something?”
Augusta-Margaret River shire ranger
co-ordinator Mick O’Regan said people who ignored closures could be
fined.
“Given we know the surf is looking good
for tomorrow and there’s a lot of visitors in our region … we feel
another temporary closure is warranted,” he said.
Of course, today’s knock, and yesterday’s
swipe, come just one week after two Great
White attacks on the one day that caused the cancellation of the
Margaret River Pro.
I asked one local surfer about the mood in the south-west and he
said “Some guys are taking a break or going up north or to Indo.
But most guys are, like, ‘Fair bump, play on.'” (It’s an Australian
football analogy.)
After today’s incident, two rangers from the Department of
Fisheries stood at the top of the stairs at Main Break advising
surfers not to paddle out.
At dusk tonight, the surf had pulsed to eight-to-ten feet and
fifteen guys were still out.
