The attack confirms, as if confirmation was necessary, Western Australia’s reputation as the shark attack capital of the world.
A Perth man was rushed to hospital yesterday with serious leg injuries after being hit by a suspected ten-foot bull shark in Perth’s Swan River, the first attack of its sort in fifty years.
The attack, at a deep-water part of the Swan River called Blackwall Reach, which is popular with cliff divers, has always had bit of a rep as being sharky, although no attacks.
The last fatal hit in the river was in 1923 and the last attack, a minor bite on a teenage sea scout, was in 1969.
Cameron Wrathall was swimming in fifteen-foot deep water with his buddy Richard O’Brien when O’Brien saw a large fin surface near his pal.
“This thing came out of the deep and Cameron called out ‘shark’. There was just blood everywhere, red water.” Mr O’Brien told Nine News Perth reporter Lucy McLeod.
Wrathall was bitten on the leg and thigh. The pair attempted to swim to shore and were helped by a couple of kayakers and a paddleboarder, the kayakers using a shirt as a tourniquet.
CPR was performed on the beach and the man is currently in ICU after surgery.
The attack confirms, as if confirmation was necessary, Western Australia’s reputation as the shark attack capital of the world.
Three weeks ago, the second-biggest Great White shark ever seen in Western Australia was caught and tagged just offshore a popular city beach. Surf Life Saving WA said thirty-one sharks had been spotted in that same week, closing eleven beaches and warned of an “abnormally high number of sharks.”
The “mammoth” Great White swimming so close to a popular beach, it said, was “not an isolated incident.”
It followed two fatal attacks by Great Whites in Esperance,diver Gary Johnson in January and surfer Andrew Sharpe in October.
In July, a surfer survived being hit by a “freakishly big” Great White at Bunker Bay, a few hours south of Perth.
And in November, bodyboarder Charles Cernobori was killed by a suspected bull or tiger shark at Cable Beach, Broome, in Western Australia’s north-west.
A recent poll of 1071 Perth beachgoers found three-quarters were too terrified to go more than thirty-feet from shore.
