Carry a tourniquet, learn how to use it, maybe save a life.

When Gold Coast surfer Robin Pedretti was hit and killed by a Great White yesterday, even after his buddies belted the shark and got him to the beach conscious, it brought into relief the new reality that if you wanna surf certain joints, carry a tourniquet.

Last night I spoke to Jon Cohen, an ER doctor who repurposes military tourniquets for use in the surf and who has made it his mission to use his expertise the solve the problem of preventable shark attack deaths.

He knows that most Great White hits are a bite-and-release taste test so once the shark leaves, if you’re quick a life can be saved.

Cohen, a Canadian who learned to surf in Hawaii, works around Australia in various emergency departments, including Esperance, a sudden hotspot in Great White attack fatalities.

He says he hasn’t analysed yesterday’s attack, so he’s speaking generally, but if you can get a tourniquet above the wound site, your buddy has a good chance of living.

There’s an exception here.

If the shark takes off an entire leg or arm and there’s no stump, well, even a combat medic can’t stop the bleeding.

But if there’s a stump, there’s a chance, a good chance.

If you act fast.

You carrying a tourniquet in your wetsuit? Or on the beach?

Before anything, before calling anyone, get it on, tight, a couple of inches above the joint.

That’s it.

No tourniquet or it’s in the car?

Get a towel. Apply as much pressure as you can where the blood is coming out. All that matters is stopping the blood.

A catastrophic attack and your buddy is going to lose consciousness in three minutes; after five minutes the outcomes are poor, says Cohen.

“Once someone goes into hypovolemic shock a cascade of bad things happen in your body. It decreases your chance of survival,” says Cohen. “In all of the tactical combat critical care, in military areas, wherever there’s mass casualties, big shootings, bombs, massive car crashes, the only thing that’s indicated to do before anything else is to get on the tourniquet.”

Right now, Cohen is working with an ocean safety group in Esperance, a pretty Western Australian town that’s been hit by three Great White attacks in the last six years. Two dead, including a teenage girl, and a man left without an arm and hand. (See Gary Johnson, killed Jan, 2020, teen surfer Laeticia Brouwer in 2017, and Sean Pollard, 2014.)

At a recent seminar teaching Shark Bite Management in Esperance, eighty people turned up.

People carry custom kits in their cars with a sticker on the back that says “Tourniquet Trained”.

I ask Cohen, if being trained in the use of tourniquets is the new CPR.

“There’s still going to be a lot more people during of heart attacks, and that’s true in the surf,” he says, “But if you’re surfing with your family, your kids, some group of buddies, getting the crew together to make sure they know what to do, giving it thought, having a strategy of what to do is part of your risk assessment when surfing sharky spots.”

Click here to check out Cohen’s range of tourniquets, including one built-into a leash for sixty Australian dollars. 

Outrageous acts of bravery fail to save surfer hit by shark…

A sixty-year-old Queensland surfer has died after being attacked by a ten-foot shark at Salt Beach, in front of popular holiday resorts Peppers Salt Resort and Spa and Mantra on Salt, and forty miles north of shark-attack hotspot Byron Bay.

NSW police confirmed the death after it was reported a 10-foot shark had hit the surfer on the leg.

Great Whites and a Bull shark had recently been spotted in the area.

The surfer died on the beach at 10:40am.

Witnesses report two other surfers fought off the shark before dragging the injured man to the beach where paramedics fought, unsuccessfully, to save his life.

“Those two males had to fight off the shark and we’ll certainly be recognising their actions at a later stage for their heroic nature,” said Tweed-Byron police inspector Matt Kehoe. “It was a catastrophic injury and was deceased when he was brought to shore, despite the efforts of those two gentlemen. They did everything they could to save him.

All beaches between Kingscliff and Cabarita have been cleared of swimmers and surfers and will remain closed for 24 hours.

Given shark attacks on surfers are the new normal, it makes a helluva lot of sense, particularly in areas where hits have become common, Byron Bay, WA, Santa Cruz, South Africa, to carry purpose-built tourniquets.

As reported six months ago, a shark attack, even by a monster White, doesn’t necessarily mean a death sentence.

Once you’ve stopped the blood flow using a tourniquet you’ve got four hours before the leg, or arm, is choked off and dies. It means if you’re at a remote beach with no phone redemption, you can tourniquet the wound and take off for an ambulance or chopper without your buddy dying.

Surf Doc Jon Cohen runs classes on how to treat shark attack wounds and sells repurposed military tourniquets on his site bettersurf.com.au for thirty bucks apiece or sixty if you want a version built into a legrope.

“All it takes is one person to squeeze the leg in the right spot,” says Cohen. “You only die from bleeding to death. Stop the bleeding, you stop the death. It’s the same as what soldiers in Iraq do. Their buddy gets shot in the leg, they put a tourniquet above the bleeding point, and they live.”

It ain’t complicated.

“You just have to step up and act,” he says.

Guaranteed tubes at seven dollars apiece ain't a bad sell.

It’s been a wild debut year for Australia’s first, and still only, public wave tank, located a mile-and-a-half walk, run or thirty-dollar cab ride from Melbourne airport.

In January, Urbnsurf was closed after freak “mud rain” left the facility with a brown tank. It was an act of God that must’ve taken the joint’s PR team by surprise given “mud-rain” is unlikely to’ve made it onto the list of potential closures. Death, turds, paralysis, board through an eyeball, lightning, hail, these you can prepare for and mount compelling responses to.

But to be shat on from outer space?

Also shitting on the pool was a Chinese-made influenza that shuttered the pool, and everything else, for two months.

Urbnsurf used the time closed to jump into a little early maintenance: peeling paint was patched, the generator got an early service etc.

In  two weeks, the place reopens.

With a few changes, most of ’em good.

Right now it’s eighty bucks to jump in a pool with eighteen other surfers hollering for each set’s twelve waves. (There’s eighteen sets an hour.)

Upon reopening, a new sesh for what can loosely be called “experts” will cost $129, twelve surfers in the water and every set a slab or  “beast mode” and its three variants. If it’s onshore, you’ll just get B4, a new version of the Beast that will stay open even if a mean ol’ southerly is tearing hell out of the place.

The other Beast modes have also been tweaked, reducing the weird chandeliering you get sometimes,

Eighteen tubs for $A129 or $US90 works out a pretty reasonable seven bucks apiece.

You wanna know if there’s an air wave yet?

Yeah, me too.

They got two.

One’s called The Ramp; the other don’t have a name but it’s supposedly “Waco-esque”.

No plans to loose it to the public sessions yet ’cause it’s so intimidating, effectively the Beast mode as a closeout.

(Book a private hour for $1500 and you can call in whatever you want.)

And the water temp?

In the guts of summer it hovered around twenty (sixty-five F); now it’s down to twelve (fifty-three F).

As a rule, it’s a buck-and-a-half under Victoria’s ocean water temps.

Brrrrrr, yeah, although you can now hire four-three and five-four Rip Curl suits.

Booties, hoods, too.

Jacuzzis remain closed until further notice.