"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.
“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.
“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.
“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.”