Do you really wanna know what lurks under the bed?

In what could be argued to be an existential fallacy, an Australian drone operator has fitted an alarm to his aircraft to warn surfers when he spots nearby sharks.

“I had to take some kind of initiative because of the amount of shark sightings,” Adam Fitzroy told the Port Macquarie News. “It’s not my responsibility to patrol beaches but if I do see some kind of imminent danger I want to be able to alert people.”

Check it out here.

Now, drones bug the shit out of me.

They drag their butts through the sky like giant Mesozoic mosquitoes, stalking lineups uninvited and sucking the ambience out of any peaceful surf scene.

And they can make problems where there weren’t any, like Mr Fitzroy has done here.

Were the surfers in his video actually at risk?

Or was he just capturing what would be an otherwise unnoticed, every day occurrence?

I live just south of the largest White shark nursery in Australia. Conservative estimates put the number of juveniles in my area at around 250. You can actually check out one of the local beaches on on Google maps and spot the silhouette of a shark in the satellite image.

Chuck in bulls, tigers, bronzers. They’re out there, lurking. Yeah, the likelihood of an attack for me is still low. Juvie Whites are supposedly docile. My local area is netted.

Only a couple of serious attacks in the last hundred years.

But go looking for them and you will find them. Do I need to know every time I’m in da bite zone of one of the fuckers?

Hell, nah. I’d probably never surf again.

So my initial reaction is to call this guy a Chicken Little, screaming at shadows only he can see and shattering the cognitive dissonance we employ every time we surf.

I want to say this is another example of technology overstepping its boundaries.

We don’t need this level of vigilante surveillance in our lives. The hand of fate shall not be bowed to.

But here’s the rub, I don’t live on the north coast where this shit is actually life or death.

I don’t know what it’s like to see somebody attacked.

Or to not be able to surf certain beaches for months at a time.

Or to have to truly consider what it would feel like to be consumed alive, cold black eyes staring at me blankly while I spend the final moments of my life gasping, grasping, succumbing to the ultimate agony.

What if this drone alarm actually worked, and the guy saved somebody from getting the chomp?

Surely it would all be worth it?

Could it actually work? Should it work?

Cute guy with genuine questions, seeking answers.

(Editor’s note: Here’s a happy White near happy children, peacefully co-existing etc.)

"For a slap on the wrist, I'm gunna go dunk a nineteen-year-old Israeli chick straight out of national service…"

Is it not true that the purpose of social media was/is to publicly shame and punish someone who has massively or minorly fucked up and suffered the misfortune of being caught in the act?

And, who among us, has not enjoyed the tremendous pleasure of kicking a gal while they are down and maybe, if they are truly compassionate, feeling a little frisson of “there but for the grace of God, go I” etc etc.

Magistrate Karen Stafford took a slightly different view on the matter when she sentenced Mark “Carcass” Thomson for his surf rage incident at Ballina Court, yesterday, 11am EST.

If you recall from the last instalment, Carcass had hired a legal team of three.

Costs were slashed by a third yesterday when only two showed up for the sentencing. A female who remained silent and did not address the judge (strategic error?) and the Bobby Duvall look-alike who got a little heavily irradiated getting thawed out from the cryovac.

Kaz did not enjoy the vibe of Cryovaced Bobby Duvall.

He addressed the judge early asking if they could address the sentencing now. In so many words she told him to sit the fuck down and wait and to add a little salt into the wound made him spell his name out to the court.

After a thousand AVO applications and penitent 20 years olds who had crashed cars while driving drunk were dispensed with, Kaz called the “Matter of Mark Thomson” on and asked if they were any further submissions.

“Yes, your Honour,” said CBD.

He came up with two references,“not many”, he admitted, “but they are damn good.”

The only genuine surprise of the hearing was that Albe Falzon, creator of surf hippy utopian film Morning of the Earth, was one of the two referees.

As has now been widely reported, the solicitor also made representation to the court that the abuse Thomson had been subjected to on the internet be taken into account as punishment already served.

CBD found the material “horrific” and admitted he had read most of it (presumably at the billable hourly rate. Good gig, reading BeachGrit and getting paid for it!).

What’s more horrific?

Being called a cunt on the internets or a bill for fifty-grand from a team of barristers who get laughed at by the judge and can’t secure a not guilty verdict?

Kaz, if I read her right, very much enjoyed delivering the sentence, which she stretched out over 40 minutes of high-quality oratory.

She broke it down into three categories.

The max penalty available for the offence, five years in the pen, two years available to her in the local court.

The seriousness of the crime, between the middle-and-high range.

And, finally, the subjective features of the defendant.

Here, she lingered to deliver some real tough talk.

She found Carcass at all times the aggressor, the action deliberate and sustained. She called Jodie Cooper an “elite surfer, not a weekend hack”, the only slightly bum note, weekend warrior would have been better.

She noted the total lack of insight or remorse shown by Carcass and to answer the plea made by his legal team that it was out of character she raised the matter of a previous assault in 1998.

“The court needs to make sure there is adequate punishment to deter the crime (particularly Mr Thomson) and to protect the community, including the surfing community,” Kaz said.

At this point I wrote, “Wow! She’s gunna put him away!”

Instead of putting the defendant away though, she aimed up at the surfing community itself – those who had perhaps shown a little too much relish in delivering a kick on social media.

Were you one of the tough talkers?

Your “extra-curial” punishment was taken in favor of the defendant!

Crazy innit.

Kaz’s deterrent? Two years of being a good boy and 300 hours picking up rubbish at Lismore, presumably tailored around good swells at the Point.

Are you deterred, comrades?

I’m not.

For a slap on the wrist, I’m gunna go dunk a nineteen-year-old Israeli chick straight out of national service.

Give her the old Lennox baptism.

Kidding Kaz! I’m deterred!

Online bullies save surf-mat king from prison…

The Lennox surf-mat king, Mark Thomson, has avoided a possible two-year jail sentence for holding the former pro surfer Jodie Cooper’s head underwater in what he has described as a “maritime incident.”

Cooper, who was the world number two in 1985, told Ballina Local Court last month that Thomson dropped in on her on a crowded day at Lennox Head (100 surfers in the water) and, after a collision, held her underwater.

“He had reached around and grabbed me and pushed me under the water. He just grabbed me with two hands and just forced me under the water,” said the fifty-five year old. “It was like he was standing on top of me and as he was doing that he was pulling my hair.”

In sentencing Thomson, who is fifty-four, Magistrate Karen Stafford noted the offence was in the upper-range of seriousness and that Thomson had form in the surf-fight game, referring to another incident at Byron Bay in 1998.

However, Stafford took into account a submission from his lawyer Andrew Sochacki who said Thomson had suffered psychological distress as a result of online “abuse”.

“Disgusting and horrifying,” Sochacki said.

Stafford sentenced  Thomson to 300 hours’ community service with a two-year community corrections order.

BeachGrit‘s man on the spot, Steve Shearer, who will be reporting on the event tomorrow, was the go-to man for the state press.

“It just goes to show that even if there is a violent episode in the surf, unless there’s video evidence it probably won’t go to court, and even if there is video evidence, you’re just going to get a slap on the wrist,” he told ABC.

The good news for anyone who wants to buy the “most advanced production surf mat ever made”, Thomson’s Krypt MT5 Surf Mat Series IV, $US195, is Thomson ain’t disappearing into the NSW prison system.

Order here.