Oooowee, lookee here, a pretty lil hipster!

Beach cops coming to Byron Bay after council passes world-first law making legropes compulsory, with fines of up to $1100!

Derek Rielly

By

Be careful what you wish for…

After what feels like a never-ending series of near-fatal accidents around Byron featuring leashless hipsters on longboards belting people in the head, its council has unanimously voted to enforce the wearing of legropes by law. 

Yesterday, councillor Cate Coorey, a progressive who says “we must heal and restore this land and plan for a climate disrupted future” put forward the motion that would see cops roaming the beach ready to sting the leashless with on-the-spot fines of $75 or $1100 if you want to take it to court. 

“This is not all about being punitive,” said Coorey. “Some have said, ‘surfers are a rebellious community and they won’t support it’, but they nearly all do because they nearly all wear leg ropes,” 

There’s gonna be signs on the beach and rangers on the sandy beat although the council’s legal advice is it might be a little tricky to make a clean bust. 

“The offence … is not just about engaging in certain conduct [not wearing a leash], but engaging in that conduct contrary to a notice,” the report said, adding the council would need to prove they had passed “near enough to a notice prior to entering the water that they could be said to have acted contrary to it”.

Two months ago, the pro surfer Matt Cassidy nearly bled out on the beach at Wategos after being hit by a loose board and six months back, an aged care worker and mother of a disabled kid was crippled after she got belted by an out-of-control surf pilot who then criticised her for damaging his board with her bone and tissue. 

“It sends the right message that people are starting to take it seriously, that surf safety is something we should have top of mind when we enter the water,” said Cassidy. “If it helps just one kid hanging out at the lagoon at the Pass not get hit in the head by a mal, they’ve done the right thing.”

You like cops on the beach?

Or do you prefer a little ol frontier justice?

Open Thread: Comment Live on final’s day of the Margaret River Pro where dreams grow from blood of decapitated stablemates!

Chas Smith

By

Are you ready to rumble?

Surf Ranch.
Surf Ranch.

Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch under dire threat as apocalyptic flooding predicted for Lemoore, California ahead of the Surf Ranch Pro!

Chas Smith

By

The tub runneth over.

Only a handful of the world’s finest surfers remain, currently, in Western Australia twiddling thumbs and anticipating the final day of the Margaret River Pro. Yes, that window is nearly shut with Filipe Toledo, Barron Mamiya, Gabriel Medina and Griffin Colapinto waiting to see which amongst them will be crowned a king. Carissa Moore, Caroline Marks, Tyler Wright and Bronte Macaulay waiting to see which amongst them will be crowned a queen.

The rest of the championship tour, those who did not get chopped and/or did get chopped but also received a bonus wildcard from the World Surf League, are likely home packing their bags for the upcoming Surf Ranch Pro which doesn’t kick off until the end of May but the excitement is impossible to contain.

Oh, who am I kidding. Everyone hates that event. The surfers hate it, the fans hate it and, apparently, nature hates it too for Lemoore, Surf Ranch’s home, is predicted to be underwater by the time the World Surf League rolls into town.

Yes, a historically wet winter has left California’s lakes full, its rivers running over and its mountains covered in snow. As the weather warms, that snow will melt and flood the Central Valley.

Per the Associate Press:

Water managers are concerned that the spring snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada will be so massive that the north fork of the Kings River won’t be able to contain it and carry it toward the Pacific Ocean. Much of the water also is being channeled into the river’s south fork, which winds through the area near the small city of Lemoore to fill a vast basin.

Residents are packing trailers and ready to flee, farmers worried as the long dormant Lake Tulare has reemerged.

Governor Gavin Newsom is so stressed that not even the Liberty Farms pekin duck pressé with buttered popcorn grits, sunny side up quail egg, crispy cipollini onion and pimentón jus from The French Laundry can cheer him up.

But how do you think nervous locals will feel when Erik Logan, Jessi Miley-Dyer and gang show up all giggly and goofy?

Moreover, what will the threat of disaster do to already slashed ticket prices?

THE MOMENTUM IS REAL.

Great White shark provoked to kill at Little Bay, a short drive south of Sydney airport.

Gruesome fatal attack on swimmer by 15-foot Great White in front of shocked onlookers officially classified as a “provoked incident”!

Derek Rielly

By

"I heard a scream and the shark was just chomping on his body and the body was in half just off the rocks here.”

A little over a year ago, a swimmer, a vet from the West’s misadventure in Afghanistan, was hit and killed by a fifteen-foot Great White shark at Little Bay, a few clicks south of Maroubra beach in Sydney’s south-east.

Simon Nellist, who was thirty-five, was practising for an upcoming charity swim when the White hit from below, attacking while onlookers watched and filmed from rocks a few metres away.

Fisherman Kris Linto said he saw the White attack.

“The shark came and attacked them vertically,” Linto told Nine News. “We heard a yell and then turned around. [The splash] looked like a car just landed in the water.”

Another fisherman said the man was in front of him when he was dragged underwater by the Great White. 

When he went down there were so many splashes. It was terrible. I am shaking,” he told ABC news. I keep vomiting. It’s very, very upsetting. He just …enjoying the day, but that shark took his life.”

There’s a video kicking around of the attack but y’probably want to avoid.

Here’s some of the dialogue.

“Someone just got eaten by a shark. Oh man! Oh no! That’s insane. That’s a Great White shark.”

“The person’s still there!”

“I just saw a four to five metre great white explode on the surface just here on a swimmer and it was like a car landing in the water.”

“Fuck man, I heard a scream and the shark was just chomping on his body and the body was in half just off the rocks here.”

“It came back and swallowed parts of his body and that was it. It disappeared.”

Half of Nellist’s body was recovered. 

Ironically, six months earlier Nellist posted on Facebook, “Shark net and drum lines protect no one and kill all kinds of marine life each year.”

It was the first fatal shark attack in Sydney since 1963 when the actress Marcia Hathaway, legs as delicate as a crane’s and let’s not be coy here fine jutting breasts clearly created by God, was hit in Sydney Harbour although not, as you know, the first, or last, fatal Great White attack in Australia where the fish has been afforded federal protection since 1999. 

Now, the International Shark Attack file has, inexplicably, at least on the surface, labelled the attack a “provoked incident” for the purposes of its macabre ledger. 

“While Mr Nellist did nothing consciously to provoke an incident, he was swimming in an area where people were fishing,” Gavin Naylor, director for the Florida Programme for Shark Research, wrote in an email to the Shark Bytes YouTube channel. “Fishing is an activity that draws sharks in. We therefore consider it provoked for our purposes… Any factor that draws sharks to an area (fishing, chumming, scalloping, etc) or behaviour that goads the shark, riding them, petting them, feeding them (you might be surprised what people do!) are thought to induce behaviours that are not typical.”

Relatives say Nellist’s mother was left wondering “how could he return from the frontline (of Afghanistan) unscathed to then go to Australia, go out for a swim and get killed.”

Breaking: World’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater gifted full season wildcard after failing to perform and being publicly decapitated!

Chas Smith

By

The future was yesterday!

Kelly Slater, Kelly Slater, Kelly Slater, etc. but did you really think the world’s greatest surfer would actually go away, could actually leave after becoming decapitated after the much ballyhooed mid-season cut?

Ha!

After quietly changing the rules under cover of darkness, the World Surf League has come into the light and gifted our 11x champion a golden ticket into the season’s remaining events plus the entire beginning of next year’s campaign.

Per the sizzling hot press release:

MARGARET RIVER, Western Australia, Australia (Thursday, April 27, 2023) – Kelly Slater (USA) and Johanne Defay (FRA) have been awarded the WSL Season Wildcards for 2023/2024. The Season Wildcards gives Slater and Defay entry into Championship Tour (CT) events following the Mid-season Cut and entry into the first half of the 2024 CT season. Miguel Pupo (BRA) and Brisa Hennessy (CRC) have been awarded the 2024 WSL Season Wildcards, which gives entry to all competitions in the first half of the 2024 CT season.

Slater, as a former World Champion, and Defay, as a previous Final 5 competitor, will earn ranking points as the Season Wildcards and thus will be eligible for the WSL Final 5 rankings, where the Top 5 surfers on the men’s and women’s CT will compete in the Rip Curl WSL Finals to compete for the 2023 World Title. Slater’s ranking points will also give him the opportunity to compete for provisional qualification for the Olympic Games Paris 2024. Defay’s provisional qualification for the Olympics was confirmed last week at the Western Australia Margaret River Pro.

The WSL is the Tier 1 pathway to qualification for the world’s best surfers to the Olympic Games. Of the 48 athletes competing in the games, the Top 18 competitors (10 men and 8 women) will qualify via the 2023 WSL Championship Tour’s final rankings. Each country can only qualify a maximum of two men and two women.

Wow.

Ish.

While stupidity and questionable behavior reigns supreme in Santa Monica, Slater being allowed to continue to waffle around in the public eye was a foregone conclusion. The now obviously failing league clearly needs the world’s greatest surfer more than he needs it…

…oh hell. It’s a proper embarrassing junk show all around. Slater is only, and maybe not even anymore, a threat in heavily barreling lefts. One remains on tour. And while sitting champion Filipe Toledo is too afraid to paddle, is there any thought that Cocoa Beach’s finest has anything left in the tank?

What’s more, how does Jackson Baker feel about this wicked turn?

Ramzi Boukhaim?

Let him, the greatest of all-time, prove me wrong, but I say he does not and the pandering to the past, instead of the future, lays the World Surf League absolutely bare.

No?

Please share your opinion.

Jon Pyzel and Matt Biolos by @theneedforshutterspeed/Step Bros
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