Meanwhile, TV drone reveals Great Whites still cruising Tuncurry shorebreak.

An arresting moment during a TV report on Tuesday’s fatal hit on a surfer by a Great White at Tuncurry, a fishing town four hours north of Sydney.

A drone goes up, hovers over the site of the fatal hit and there, fifty feet from the shore, is a cruising White.

(Watch here.)

To get some perspective on the joint, imagine a dreamy slice of sand on the northside of a breakwall, protected from the prevailing southerlies and welcoming to any sorta swell with east in it.

Mostly, short, hollow A-frames fifty feet or so from shore.

The surfer, Mark Sanguinetti, who was fifty-nine and from Newport Beach in Sydney, died on the beach after being hit by a fifteen-foot Great White. He’d gone on a little surf trip with three of his pals.

Then the White hit.

A witness on the beach said, “The shark came out of the water, just smashed him, five seconds later he came round and hit him again… Just the whole bone exposed, not meat on him at all.”

A note written by his daughter and posted on Twitter reads,

Some knew his as Skidders, some as Big Marky, and others as Ba, but we all knew him as a legend with a heart as deep and vast as the ocean, which was his first of many loves. If you knew him, you understand how you were to.

We’re planning a paddle out in tribute of Mark – anyone who knew him, or surfed with him, we’re he’d like everyone to be there. It’ll be held on Tuesday the 24th at Palm Beach at 4:30PM.

Dad was a truly special soul. A kind, generous, thoughtful man, friend, and father. He saw the light within everyone and every situation. He’s home now, in the ocean and in our hearts, and he’ll be riding the waves of his life with us forever.

All beaches around Tuncurry remain closed.

Kelly writes, "I think if you continue to do what you're doing, you're gonna die. So I highly suggest you stop."

The Brazilian big-wave chaser Maya Gabeira has made a raft of stunning accusations on an upcoming episode of In Depth with Graham Bensinger, which airs this Sunday. 

Gabeira, who is thirty-four, is noted for a few things, winning a couple of gongs from the Guinness Book of World Records for biggest wave ridden by a gal, busting a leg and drowning (revived!) at Nazaré, getting belted to within an inch of her life at big Teahupoo, and being the daughter of a Brazilian revolutionary whose group famously kidnapped the US ambassador. 

In the interview with Bensinger, Gabeira reveals a DM from Kelly where he tells her she is gonna die real soon unless she cools it in big waves.

“Kelly felt like he saw me almost dying in Tahiti on a huge, huge, huge day… He felt very convicted that I was out of place… He thought it was too big for him or he wanted to save himself for a competition, but it was probably the biggest ever surfed in Teahupoʻo. So, with that said, maybe it was too big for me. I was very scared, I can tell you. And things did go wrong…”

And the DM?

“I wasn’t, like, ‘Yay, can’t wait to see what it is!’ I was like, ‘Fuck [this] can’t be any good’ …  He said something on the lines of, ‘You are unprepared. You are endangering people around you when they have to go in and rescue in such scenarios. I think if you continue to do what you’re doing, you’re gonna die. So I highly suggest you stop.’

When she got her stilt snapped at Nazaré and had to be revived on the beach, Laird said she “didn’t have the skill to be surfing in those conditions.”

Bensinger asks if she has a desire to reconnect with Slater, Hamilton.

“No, I’m okay with it. I really am. They had their points. They could have been more fortunate the way that they passed it on to me, but it was a different era too. It was a different time.I think women were treated differently back then and it was OK.It wasn’t as discussed, our role and our place in society. I think a lot has changed and it was what it was. It made me who I am, so I’m okay with it.”

When it comes to Carlos Burle, Gabeira and her current tow-bro German Seb Steudtner blame him for her near-death episode at Nazaré. 

“I was so caught in the relationship. He was so above what I could criticize that at the time him going out felt natural. I supported him. I wouldn’t right now, but that’s how important he was to me,” says Gabeira.

The bald thing happened when the WSL didn’t include her in the big-wave awards.

“I went to the awards in April in California and they never show[ed] my wave. I was like, ‘Where’s my wave? What the f*** am I doing here? I think around three or four months later I realized that it was going nowhere and that’s when I had the idea of doing something public and that would be the petition… I needed some support, exposure. With that, I also decided to retire. Because who was gonna petition against their own sport league and not retire, right? I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna say all those things about them and say how incapable they are and how they have prejudice or whatever… It made me sad, broke my heart and I lost hair over it. I had blocks of hair fall out of my head. So I could tell the stress was getting to me.”

More tears as field gets whittled away!