If you surf on Australia's east coast, buy and learn to use a tourniquet. Great Whites, protected in Australia since 1999, ain't going anywhere.

Yesterday afternoon, and half an hour before sunset, surfer Joe Hoffman was hit by what authorities have identified as a ten-foot Great White shark.

The shark bit Hoffman on the arm, and left a two-foot crescent-shaped bite on his Outer Islands surfboard. 

Hoffman paddled to the beach and was carried to a nearby park by six surfers who used his legroom as a makeshift tourniquet.

Local surfer Josh Shorrick described Hoffman as being “incredibly brave despite the pain”.

“We carried him to the BBQ area where ambos could reach him. Six of us helped,” Shorrick told News Corp. “I hope he’s going to be alright.”

To the surprise of nobody, least of all surfers, a NSW Department of Primary Industry (DPI) spokeswoman confirmed the shark was a ten-foot White.

“NSW DPI shark scientists have analysed photographs of the bite and determined a White shark of approximately three metres in length is likely responsible for the bite.”

One month ago, surfer Mark Sanguinetti was killed by a fifteen-foot Great White at Tuncurry, one hundred miles south. 

What’s the takeaway, here?

After two decades of the Great White being protected, this is the new reality of surfing on Australia’s east coast.

So buy and learn to use a tourniquet. Most, although certainly not all, Great White hits are a bite-and-release taste test so once the shark leaves, if you’re quick a life can be saved.

If you can get a tourniquet above the wound site, your buddy has a good chance of living.

There’s an exception here.

If the shark takes off an entire leg or arm and there’s no stump, well, even a combat medic can’t stop the bleeding.

But if there’s a stump, there’s a chance, a good chance. If you act fast.

You carrying a tourniquet in your wetsuit? Or on the beach?

Before anything, before calling anyone, get it on, tight, a couple of inches above the joint.

That’s it.

No tourniquet or it’s in the car?

Get a towel. Apply as much pressure as you can where the blood is coming out. All that matters is stopping the blood.

A catastrophic attack and your buddy is going to lose consciousness in three minutes; after five minutes the outcomes are poor.

(Click here to check out ER doctor and surfer Jon Cohen’s range of tourniquets, including one built-into a leash)

"So heavy…his parents are in shock."

A surfer in this twenties, Joe Hoffman, has been hit by a shark at Crescent Head, an old-timer’s sorta point, although very iconic, historical etc, five hours north of Sydney.

Usual scene. 

Surfer being carried out of the water. Siren. An ambulance. A chopper landing on a golf course, paramedics, crowds, iPhones poised to snatch vision of a severely injured man, wondering how the hell his life just changed, if he’s going to live to see his family again.

The shaper of Hoffman’s boards, Mitchell Rae, posted on Instagram,

“I just spoke with his dad and from all accounts it’s a very nasty bite to his bicep. The first people that got to him were doctors by Providence and they tourniquet his arm with a leg rope immediately. he’s been evacuated to John Hunter at Newcastle now. So heavy.   i’m feeling quite numb as I’ve known Joe since he was a baby and his parents are in shock.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ8PVu5nt7F/

 

Real sharky on the east coast at the moment and right in the middle of an out of season north-east swell. A healthy stock of whales migrating north for the winter, football-field sized schools of salmon, and a predator responsible for, what, how many dead surfers now, and protected since 1999. 

Twelve peopled killed almost solely by Whites in 2020, four of ’em surfers. RIP Andrew Sharpe, RIP Rob Pedretti, RIP Mani Hart-Deville, RIP Nick Slater.

In May this year, Mark Sanguinetti, who was fifty-nine and from Newport Beach in Sydney, died on the beach at Tuncurry, just south of Crescent, after being hit by a fifteen-foot Great White.

He’d gone on a little surf trip with three of his pals.

A witness on the beach at Tuncurry 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.”

Details are pretty scarce right now, although it ain’t a secret that Great Whites frequent the area. 

Around the same time, BeachGrit writer, commenter of note, Surf Ads, a couple of hours south, fled the surf when another surfer was bumped by a shark of considerable girth and unknown intent. 

“I wish they could bring John Denver back to life just so he could sue Mark Zuckerberg for this."

A gift for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s almost eight million Instagram followers this morning with a video of a cartoon-like “Zucky” e-foiling a boat’s wake, carrying an American flag and cut to John Denver’s Country’s Roads. 

The great Tahitian surfer and ski wrangler at the WSL’s Surf Ranch, Raimana Van Bastolaer, was among the first to congratulate his pal on the post, dropping shaka and ok emojis. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ6u_nFnGmR/

Others, less kind.

We need a ‘erase your memory of this’ option,” the Hoarse Whisperer wrote on Twitter. “I wish they could bring John Denver back to life just so he could sue Mark Zuckerberg for this.”

A noted economist,

And this perceptive man,

Zuckerberg, who is thirty-seven and whose net wealth hovers around the hundred-and-twenty bill mark, was an early adopter of the electric foil board, regularly making appearances on BeachGrit on the miraculous little watercraft. Readers will remember his controversial “white-face” makeup (“I’m not going to apologise for wearing sunscreen,” he said) and his recent humble-brag shout-out to ultra-watercat Kai Lenny.

Out e-foiling on a fine Hawaiian day, wearing a black wetsuit and helmet, face unseen so maybe slathered in sunscreen, maybe not, Zuckerberg grabbed a clip from either wife or personal filmer, posted it to Facebook and wrote, “Kai Lenny, am I doing this right?” all set to a White Stripes’ cover of “I just don’t know what to do with myself.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CO3JDi7nwYd/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=e6e6ba06-66c1-434e-b836-713bb82e5f75

"Someone's heard yelling for medical assistance!"

Sean “Poopies” McInerney, Jamie O’Brien’s former crazy sidekick in the Who is JOB series, has made what appears to be a stunning debut for Jackass, the reality comedy TV and movie franchise created by Johnny Knoxville and his skater pals. 

In a piece for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, and which may feature in Jackass 4, new Jackasser Poopies “appears to get attacked by a shark after a jump attempt. Someone’s heard yelling for medical assistance and a tourniquet as the teaser ends” reports TMZ.

The sequence airs on the first day of Discovery’s Shark Week 2021, July 11 at 10 PM ET/PT. 

Jackass 4 hits cinemas October 22, 2021.

Poopies, from Carlsbad, California, earned his nickname as a 13-year-old after a Jackass-inspired stunt where he evacuated his bowels at a busy intersection and was subsequently arrested.

He moved to the North Shore a dozen years ago, rented a room from Jamie O, got pall-y with Jamie, and quickly became the second-biggest star of Who is JOB, before quitting and starting his own off-shoot channel etc. 

Watch maybe shark attack here.