Female Great White shark (pictured) being sad.
Female Great White shark (pictured) being sad.

Official investigation launched into “big fat guy” and friends who dragged female Great White shark to New Zealand beach and mocked her as she died!

The plot thickens...

Was it yesterday, or two days ago, that we first learned about the heart-wrenching tale of a near-10-foot long female Great White shark that was allegedly netted and dragged to a New Zealand beach to die?

Time and events related to the “man-eating” apex predators, their various escapades, their man-eating etc. are starting to blur but we must not be deterred, we cannot be deterred because then the terrorists win.

But who are the terrorists in this particular New Zealand case? The Great White, who likely man-eats or would man-eat if given the opportunity, or the men, who allegedly netted, dragged, kicked and mocked as she lay there on the sand?

New Zealand’s proud government has just launched an official investigation into the matter and let us go straight to RNZ for first hand accounts.

The juvenile shark was caught in a fishing net off Orewa Beach in northern Auckland yesterday and died despite bystanders’ attempts to help.

Men who were fishing in the surf caught the 2.75m great white in a net and hauled it to shore.

A woman who was at the beach told RNZ that the group seemed intent on keeping the shark and acted in an intimidating way towards those who wanted to return it to the water.

She asked not to be identified.

“They were touching it, rolling it [and] the big fat guy did kick it,” she said.

“It was just disrespectful, and it was probably, like, intimidation as well. And that was the same guy that asked for someone to go get a knife.”

But the woman’s husband and surf lifeguards managed to pull the shark into water deep enough for it to float.

“When my husband and the lifeguards pulled it out, they were just taunting them and kicking water at them and just basically trying to get them not to take it out.”

When the shark didn’t swim off, she says the men who caught it dragged it back to shore after a minute or two.

She said she wished they’d given it more time to recuperate – even though it was probably too late to save it.

The sharks body lies in state in a university freezer.

And like the current perilous ratcheting up of tension between shark and man very much mirrors the situation between The United States of America and Iran. Retaliation expected etc. but will it be symmetrical or will the prehistoric beasts eat 20 of the world’s top 24 professional surfers before the start of their 2020 Championship Tour?

Let’s not speculate wildly. Let’s follow the evidence where it leads and hope for peace in our time.

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Listen: “Is our World Surf League a sort of Pinocchio Pleasure Island where fun-lovin’ men and women are lured, turned into donkeys then sold?”

Very scary.

And I’m starting to become worried, to become, at the very least, concerned. The World Surf League’s President of Content, Media, Studio, Etc. Erik “ELo” Logan announced his departure from the Oprah Winfrey network, embrace of “a new journey” through the exciting universe of professional surfing almost exactly one year ago from today.

Big dreams.

A bigger smile.

Oh we mocked, chuckled, cajoled because that’s what we do. His Instagram profile featured picture after picture of bigger smiles, SUP-life, Manhattan Beach shred fun, ripping, a thorough, joyful expression of surfing’s uplifting qualities. Its unique ability to inspire and heal. Its transformative properties, as it were.

Two months ago, President Logan went missing. One month ago I became worried, sarcastically, and wrote a story.

Today I am genuinely concerned for last night I had a terrible nightmare. That the Ziffs, Co-Waterpeople of the Year Dirk and Natasha, were actually very bad slave traders who lured simple, kind folk struck blind by the glories of surfing to Santa Monica. There they met Kelly Slater, “worked” on professional surfing, told their friends, “Can you believe I get to do this for a living?” Threw shakas, drank hazelnut/kona blend coffees.

Then, when they reached peak “stoke” the Ziffs would turn them into donkeys and sell them to the highest bidder for lives of toil in the salt mines. Very much like the whole Pleasure Island, originally called “Boobyland,” scenario in the Walt Disney classic Pinocchio.

A horrible, terrible nightmare but could it actually be true?

David Lee Scales and I discussed the possibility yesterday and also many other things tangentially related to this grand surfing salt mine life. Worth a listen?

Yes, but only if you yourself would not like to be turned from wooden boy into beast of burden.

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Surfer Adam Coons, with gift of stuffed Great White. | Photo: @adamcoons

Surfer attacked by Fifteen-foot Great White four days before Christmas and his rescuer talk about hit: “The shark had him in [its] mouth!”

"It felt like I just got blasted by a torpedo. I didn't feel the bite from the adrenaline and then I was immediately underwater getting thrashed."

Four days before Christmas, Californian surfer Adam Coons was hit by what he and his lifeguard buddy, Jez Howard, estimated to be a fifteen-foot Great White while surfing at Santa Rosa island, twenty-six miles off Santa Babs.

If you’ve ever been to Santa Babs, you might’ve stared at the Channel Islands out there on the horizon, these inconvenient land masses that block all the summer south swells.

Santa Rosa is the second biggest. Plenty of waves, too, if you like ’em uncrowded.

As we reported at the time, it was Jez who saved Adam’s life with his practised use of tourniquets, a simple device that can save almost anyone who’s been hit by a shark. 

Now, Adam and Jez have appeared on ABC News to talk about the attack.

“It felt like I just got blasted by a torpedo,” said Coons. “I didn’t feel the bite from the adrenaline and then I was immediately underwater getting thrashed.”

Jez saw it all from the boat.

“I looked up and the white shark was hitting at him, it took him out of the water probably I’d say about five feet, ya know the shark had him in [its] mouth. I just said ‘Come on buddy, you can make it.'”

Coons said his survival was due to the actions of his pal, the professionalism of the local Coast Guard and the miracle of Christmas.

“If any of these puzzle pieces didn’t come together, I don’t believe I would be here right now… I don’t know why it’s me and my family that get to stay together, while others have lost so much, and why I am keeping my legs and why I will have full recovery, except to hopefully inspire others to not give up on their passions and for families to hear the story of a Christmas miracle and to come together during the holidays no matter what might have been otherwise standing between them…I know that this is the plan for me and I don’t intend to squander this new lease on life.”

Coons also had his recently departed ma helping.

“My guardian angel, my mom, who was there as a lone seagull following the boat keeping a watchful eye until the chopper arrived.”

Coons says he’s unsure when he’ll surf again.

 

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Watch: “Famous, irresponsible” travel blogger parents drop 5-year-old children into shark cage while hungry Great Whites circle aggressively, menacingly!

Irresponsible or... progressive?

But what is the worst thing you have forced your angelic children into? Surfing all sandy, painful and awkward? Skiing, freezing cold, also painful and even more awkward? A sedentary life on the couch playing video games and eating frozen pizza while developing diabetes?

I have forced seven-year-old daughter into tennis. I imagine her, one day, impressing the dukes and duchesses of impressive lineages with her graceful forehand. Parking another Porsche in my garage with a wink, after winning the French Open.

She hates it. I don’t care and sometimes shout back, across the net, “You’re lucky I don’t feed you to Great White sharks!” only somewhat in jest.

As it turns out, feeding children to Great White sharks is a true phenomenon and also lucrative. Don’t believe? Oh we must turn to the well-respected child monetization website Traveller for the absolute latest.

A travel blogger couple has been labelled irresponsible after posting a video of their children, one just five years old, diving in a shark cage.

The Bucket List Family, who have a popular Youtube channel, uploaded a video of their dive with great white sharks off the coast of Baja California, in western Mexico.

Parents Garrett and Jessica were happy for their daughter Dorothy, seven, and son Manilla, five, to step into the shark cage.

The children go through the requirements beforehand, taking a safety briefing and signing a waiver.

“I was a little bit scared,” Dorothy said in a post-shoot interview. “But then I was brave.”

The two children don wetsuits and breath with ‘hooker lines’ – essentially long tubes pumping air from the boat above.

Dorothy and Manilla then plunge into the submerged shark cage, their father swimming with them.

As Manilla put it later: “It felt like I was floating in space.”

Dorothy had something else to add: “You’re in the cage. But there are holes. Lots of big holes.”

Holes big enough for those blood-mad Great Whites to swim right through, no doubt, and of course the general public became very angry, calling the escapade “child abuse” and “bad” but… and bear with me here… kids say the darndest things!

Still, the horror goes on and on and on. People declaring that the regulator does not fit in a five-year-old-mouth and the children may drown. People crowing about “safety” and “responsibility” and “common sense.”

But let’s be honest. Would you toss your beatific offspring into a shark cage? If you were paid lots of money? The video has received very many views on YouTube. Over 4 million which equals well over a few thousand dollars.

Leased Porsche coming soon (I recommend the Panamera which comfortably seats two parents plus two earners)!

No?

More as the story develops.

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Revealed: The highest yielding surf investment everyone is afraid to talk about!

What you can do, today, to start earning 30x!

If I’ve written it once in the past three days, I’ve written it six or seven times. Mostly in relation to sharks, Great White, Tiger and Bull, but it can and should be equally applied elsewhere too. It is the start of a new decade, a brand new start, and the perfect time to make some changes. To earn more money. To make better investments.

And on this note, do I have an opportunity for you that guarantees not 10x, not 20x but 30x return over investment.

Now, you may think the surf industry is still going through the worst economic downturn in the history of mankind. A still-reeling 20-year-plus recession with no end in sight and you’d be correct.

But…

…you know what the Warren Buffetts and Carl Ichans of the world preach and practice?

Zig when others zag and there is exciting potential right under your roof, likely, or for you to make if not.

A child, your child, and turning him or her into a professional surfer.

How?

Please watch this free-of-charge instructional video. My repayment will be seeing the look on your face when you pull into the carpark in your brand-new, leased Rolls-Royce.

Say it with me, “I can Dino Andino too!”

You’re welcome!

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