Surfer attacked by Great White at Kangaroo Island, airlifted to hospital; Australia’s Great White crisis reaches boiling point: “There’s a lot of sharks… you have to expect anything, frankly,” says town mayor.

"We've got heavy concentrations of sea lions and a lot of sharks live in the waters around…"

A twenty-nine-year-old man is lucky to be alive after getting hit a Great White while surfing at D’Estrees Bay at Kangaroo Island, seventy miles south-west of Adelaide in South Australia. 

He suffered “serious lacerations” to his back and thigh.

The man, who was surfing a protected reef called Sewers, named so in the nineteen-sixties because locals said the barrel “spits you out like a piece of shit”, paddled to the beach and was driven to Kangaroo’s biggest town, Kingscote, where he was met by paramedics. 

First, the local hospital, then a chopper to Adelaide for treatment.

The attack didn’t surprise Kangaroo Island’s Mayor, Michael Pengilly. 

“It’s a very popular spot down where these people are surfing down at what’s called the sewer,” he told the national broadcaster. “There’s a lot of surf spots right around the island and of course we’ve got heavy concentrations of sea lions and a lot of sharks live in the waters around, particularly the south coast of Kangaroo Island. It’s not surprising, you’re going into their territory so you have to expect anything, quite frankly.”

The last attack on Kangaroo Island was in 2005 when twenty-six-year-old surfer Josh Berris survived a hit by putting his hand into the shark’s mouth to push it away. 

Last month, a Great White was photographed swimming under the Kingscote jetty. 

It’s the, dunno, sixth?, attack by a Great White on a surfer in Australia this year? 

Lemme count. 

The hit-and-run by a “freakishly big” White at Bunker Bay on a surfer near Margaret River,  the killing of teenage surfer Mani Hart-Deville at Wooli, north of Coffs Harbour, the death of Rob Pedretti at Casuarina, just south of the Gold Coast, Nick Slater, killed at the Superbank and well-known Esperance local Andrew Sharpe taken “almost whole” by a Great White at Kelpies, the same beach teenager surfer Laticia Brouwers was killed by a White in 2017 and where Sean Pollard, 23, had an arm and another hand bitten off by a Great White in 2014.

One week ago, surfers in Esperance were run out of the water by a Great White. 

And, a few days ago, a father and his kid were eyeballed by a “giant” Great White while surfing near Port Campbell in Victoria.