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Australia’s Great White crisis: Ten-year-old boy snatched from fishing boat by Great White; dad jumps into water and saves son: “The shark’s leapt clean out of the water and it’s grabbed the little boy and pulled him straight in!”

"All the boys said [the shark] was big, I imagine it was very big."

More proof, as if proof was necessary, that Australia’s booming Great White population is becoming a little, how do you wanna say it, feisty?

Earlier today, a man and his ten-year-old kid were fishing off the little fishing port Stanley on Tasmania’s north-west coast when the boy was snatched from the boat by what witnesses say was a Great White.

The dad jumped in, spooked the shark, rescued his son.

A local abalone diver, Ben Allen, was at the boat ramp when the boat arrived.

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“All of sudden, the shark’s leapt clean out of the water and it’s grabbed the little boy and pulled him straight in,” Allen told ABC Hobart.

“But as he’s pulled him in, it’s obvious the shark’s let go. The father, with his natural instinct I suppose, has leapt in straight after his son and managed to grab him… All the boys said [the shark] was big, I imagine it was very big. It is renowned for this time of year that they do go in that area. The boys are saying [it was a] Great White.”

Allen told the ABC there has been plenty of action with Great Whites recently, but added, “It’s their area, you’re in their domain, it’s just mother nature, it’s one of those things.

Kid was a little banged up, cuts etc, maybe lost his desire to go fishing for a while.

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“Congratulations to dad. Top fella, it just a very very scary thing,” said Allen. “It is obviously a freak accident and I really do feel for the family — it could have been a lot lot worse … buy a lottery ticket, I think.”

Six days ago, a fifteen-year-old surfer was killed by a Great White at Wooli on mainland Australia’s north-east coast; a week before that, a spear fisherman was killed by a shark at Fraser Island, in Queensland, and three weeks before…that…a surfer was killed by a Great White at Kingscliff, just north of Byron Bay. 

A pattern emerges?

As Longtom posited four days ago. 

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“Is there a tipping point where something gets done about it? Or do we accept a world of increasing White sharks, more surfers getting whacked, more bleed outs, more epic battles between surfers and sharks who didn’t read the modern-day script that it was all just a case of mistaken identity and once they realised the boo boo they’d just swim off red faced.”

 

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Wayne Lunch

What this story failed to mention was that the grubby little kid was teasing pulling faces and gesticulating obscene gestures at the shark, from what he thought was the relative safety of the boat.

timsluis

This incident occurred in Tasmania. It is not reported which of the boys two heads was affected by the attack, the left or the right?

timsluis
Eddie Haiku

How long until we
Have sharks ripping our best mates
Right off a bar stool?

Hippy

Is Chas jealous that you wrote this first Derek?

Uneducated

Chas is still in a state of smug ecstacy over correctly predicting the future of the wsl.
Jealousy will kick in early next week

Derek Hynd's Missing Fins

The pattern is that most people get this: “It’s their area, you’re in their domain, it’s just mother nature, it’s one of those things.”

Laird's performance mushroom

Just wait until they figure out how to impersonate the Amazon delivery guy

david fffff

Did CVS write this headline? Be honest.

Z Knows

Shark in a time like this? Where’s the BG crew for cancellation of WSL?

NEGATRON

The Sharks are really upping their game in the race for media coverage.

HotRightNow

“Poor thing must have been starving” has long been one of my favorite Far Side cartoons. I told my buddy that is what he should tell the media if I ever got taken.

But, fuck, I had my 10 y.o. out on the nose of my eight foot kook board at a notoriously sharky spot yesterday. Now I have a new mental image of air jaws snatching to go along with my preexisting nightmare of exploding attack from below.

Dogsnuts

The shark reported rolled it’s eyes mid attack/dad joke.
But seriously this is some crazy shit.


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