“I felt sick, because sharks have been around for 400 million years and it’s only in the past 50 years that humans have been doing such a great job of getting rid of them."

Four days ago, a group of sports fishermen from the Port Hacking Game Fishing Club, competing in a contest off Cronulla in Sydney’s south, hooked an almost half-ton Tiger shark as big as their boat.

The men wrestled the fish for almost an hour before killing it and bringing it to shore for the obligatory victory photos. 

Tigers aren’t protected in NSW waters so a fisherman can do pretty much what he wants. 

Catch ‘em, drag ‘em board, belt ‘em over the head. Take selfies.

Death ain’t pretty, of course. 

And, ocean and wildlife lovers lit up, as you can imagine. 

“I had two reactions,” University of WA Professor Jessica Meeuwig, who is the director of the uni’s Centre for Marine Futures, told The West Live. “I felt sick, because sharks have been around for 400 million years and it’s only in the past 50 years that humans have been doing such a great job of getting rid of them. And the other thing is, I felt sad, because a lot of recreational fishers truly love the ocean and they love the wildlife that’s in the ocean, and they’re probably not aware that killing animals like that is basically ocean vandalism.”

Two years earlier, a ninety-pound eight year old boy from the same club spent an entire day reeling in a nine-hundred pound Tiger twenty miles off Bondi.

He that is without sin, of course, throw your rocks. 

Know, 

All those pretty little lambs, mewing like the babies they are, throats hacked open, roasted in ovens, presented as happy family meal; the calves torn from mammy at birth for veal, described as “the pale and tender meat of a very sick baby cow who was tortured to death.”

All the happy salmon and tuna we mow through, gasping on the decks of fishing boats or living miserable lives in filthy pens before getting the knife through the head.

The male chicks thrown into slicing machines, useless, mostly for any commercial purpose. 

And on and on.

Hip, foot in mess, unable to surf etc.

In pretty substantial, but altogether unsurprising, news, the eleven-time world champ Kelly Slater has announced he ain’t gonna be on the WSL’s  bird to Australia in two days. 

Slater said, “I’ve been struggling with recent and ongoing injuries in both ankles since the Pipe Masters event and I had a separate injury in my right hip (and maybe previously broken foot) this past week which has left me unable to surf. It’s a tough one for me because I love Australia so much and miss the time I usually get to spend there each year. I’ll just have to use the time to get myself up to a level physically I never really got back to after my broken foot (in Jeffreys Bay in 2017) and get myself out of constant pain. Good luck to all my fellow competitors and I hope to see everyone back on tour soon.”

Maybe he just ain’t into doing two-weeks in a crummy hotel with the windows bolted shut and living on takeaway food or maybe he isn’t into jerking his forty-nine-year-old bones around, likely, unspectacular waves at Newcastle and Narrabeen made for Medina, Ferreira, Toledo and co. 

Or

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMBgmKcHBlO/

Whatever the reason, missing part or all of the Australian leg will make it real difficult, maybe impossible, for the Champ to confect a miracle, greatest-ever-title win at Lowers in September. 

I’d suggest the sands of time have finally run out for a man whose invincibility and longevity singlehandedly kept pro surfing alive. There will be no runs at the title as a fifty year old.

An end that whimpers, no bang.

Unless Tahiti lights up.