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sam edwardes
Sam Edwardes, hit by juvie White four days ago; pal killed by Great White in 1999.

From the cosmic-cruelty dept: Surfer attacked by Juvenile White in Byron lost pal to Great White twenty years earlier!

"You can't imagine the feeling, it's a really intense hit…"

Four days ago, a surfer was hit by a juvie Great White in Byron Bay, what you might call a hot spot of shark action for the past half-doz years. 

Twenty years earlier, the same guy lost a pal to a Great White while surfing in South Oz.

Lightning do strike the same tree twice. Get hit once and it don’t mean it can’t happen again.

Sam Edwardes, who is forty-one and lives in Suffolk Park just south of Byron, was surfing at the sandspit called Belongil when the shark took a piece “the size of a football” out of his leg.

‘I just felt this thump into my leg. You can’t imagine the feeling, it’s a really intense hit… I looked down at my leg and there was an almighty hunk taken out of it and that’s when I freaked out,” he told The Today Show. “I started paddling into the beach, I was a bit frantic. I was going as fast as I could, I was racing to get to shore and it took ages. It felt like an eternity to get there.’

A helicopter ride to the Gold Coast, an induced coma and a couple of surgeries later and he’s in a stable condition.

Leg ain’t gonna be pretty and neither will the the head noise.

In 1999, Edwardes was windsurfing at Hardwicke Bay on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula with three other friends. One of ’em, Tony Donoghue, who was twenty-two, decided to stay out.

His body was never found but his recovered wetsuit revealed a fatal attack by a Great White.

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Rumpelstiltskin

there was a time growing up in byron where the two last shark attack fatalities, their last name was ford, so the running joke at the time was “have you eaten a ford lately ?”

Eddie Haiku
Greatness

Fear is a amazing attractive character to misfortune. I think it was Tom Curren whom said it best… something like you “you avoid misfortune and hazard by going for it”.

The VAL will never come to this understanding!

Otto
Otto

Sounds like good reason to harvest a healthy number GW population test group to advance the medical research to me. I agree, don’t pick up a machine gun to cull GW sharks. That seems too sporty.

Elephants have DNA (gene p53), as do most animals including humans, and maybe even GW, that suppresses tumor growth. Humans and most animals have only one copy of that gene. Elephants have at least 20 copies of p53. The gene identifies damaged DNA cells, and destroys them more swiftly and efficiently. Elephants are bigger, thus bigger risk for damaged cell as they multiply, but rarely do elephants die from cancer. They have a comparable life span to humans, 70+ years. If an expert published Findings that GW have at least 20 copies of p53, then you may have a point. But I don’t think they can prove that. That’s where the “may” comes from.

@surfads

I’ve seen the picture of his leg post-bite. It’s a fair fucking chunk.

ricmatic

is the shark ok?

Otto

You can sense, all the way from here in the States, a vibe in the Australian air that someday soon the local citizenry are going to rise and say “fuck the politicians, fuck the shark protecting environmentalists, fuck the nay-sayers, fuck the local authorities, fuck the we-got-a-plan-better-than-culling’ers, fuck the rules, fuck the laws that say we can’t, but especially fuck these piece of shit sharks who maim and kill friend after friend, relative after relative, with no fucking end in sight”, and take the matter into their own hands to do what should have been done a long time ago, and that is cull the sharks yourselves. And anyone who says that the local citizenry shouldn’t can fuck off.

Surfy McSurfyface

Australians don’t rise up as a citizenry, we whinge, usually in the pub. Then we remember how good we have it, say fuck it, and get on with life.

Otto

Kelly learned nothing while living part-time in Australia.

Doobalachy

So when I received my drivers licence I was told to be careful on the roads because it’s likely me or one of my mates would die on the roads. So at the tender age of 50 the score for me is 1 dead on roads and 2 dead by shark attack while surfing. I’m going to speed to work tomorrow and if I hit and kill someone in their car gojng to work I guess it their fault for getting on the road.

Chief Hot stuff

For real?

Doobalachy

Brad smith, ben Geering

Chief Hot stuff

Sheeeit.
That ain’t right!
Condolences.

The Bitchy Crab

Two pals killed by sharks? Byron? South Oz? WA?

Doobalachy

WA

SharkAndClickBait

Rise up and cull the Volvos proud nation!

Cull everything you fear.

We Americans need to cull the mass shooters but doing that just makes more mass shooters. Damnit, sharks are easier.

Chief Hot stuff

Sharks are probly related too.
Or friends of the family

20 mule team

It must run in the family. I used to work with this one asshole and he brought his kids in to the office one day. They seemed like little pricks too. Probably works the same way with sharks.


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