The attack has echoes of last year’s Great White hit on a swimmer at Sydney’s Malabar beach where rock fishermen watched as the swimmer was mauled and disappeared.
The small surf town of Elliston, six hundred clicks west of Adelaide, is in mourning tonight after a popular local surfer was killed in front of horrified onlookers at around ten am today.
The man, who was forty-six, was surfing Walkers Rocks, an intermediate sorta lefthander on the inside of the bay that’s also the home to Blackfellas, the wildly hollow left slab that is a favourite of Craig Anderson, Chippa Wilson and co and which has featured in innumerable surf movies.
According to reports, after the initial hit, the Great White continued to attack for five minutes before disappearing with the body which is unlikely to be recovered.
The attack has echoes of last year’s Great White hit on a swimmer at Sydney’s Malabar beach, where rock fishermen watched as the swimmer was mauled and disappeared.
“I heard a scream and the shark was just chomping on his body and the body was in half just off the rocks here,” said one witness.
Three years ago in Esperance in Western Australia, along the same migratory route for Great Whites, the well-known local surfer Andrew Sharpe was also killed and disappeared by a fifteen-foot White, his body never recovered.
“I’ve never seen a dorsal fin that big before, not even in media footage,” he said.
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
Rest in pits Simon. Hope it was fast and as painless as possible. It would be nice to think the public is learning from these untimely attacks and public opinion is turning but realistically no one’s any safer and we haven’t learnt much to when these attacks started happening in the early 00’s. As the same old babble is repeated by the latest attention seeking marine biologist in the media. What’s obvious to any serious fisherman or surfer is the public is being lied too. White pointers are opportunistic predatory fish. If you’re in the water and they’re hungry there’s a good chance they will have a go at you. They employ the same attack methods they use on seals. If the fish attacking is big enough it will take you in one attack. If under 4 metres they will come in with a big hit, sit back and wait till you bleed out before returning. The risk is a lot higher for regular and experienced surfers than we’re lead to be believed, and ever increasing as the average number of attacks increase year on year, as the number of fish increase. It will never happen in this woke world we live in but it’s time to starting fishing
South Australia is a very Sharky place , always has been , an hr south of this spot they cage dive to watch white sharks an hr north is a giant sea lion colony, thousands of them . You are surfing in very good shark habitat when you surf here and it is a risk you take . Your knee jerk fishing statement is pretty stupid, maybe just don’t come to south Oz to surf? Same goes for all the vanlyf sheep , stick to Sydney it’s heaps safer .
So much for the myth that they don’t like our flavor and that once they realize we’re not seala, spit us out and move along with their business.
Man.. this is horrible news. All the best to old matey’s family and the locals.
A quick google about the joint and I found this horror story.. give it a read. I thank my lucky stars for each session ending safely here, can’t imagine this place being a reality for each go out. Different world.
https://www.dscribe.net.au/…
Drops off to 90 fathoms in the channel next to the reef , pretty good shark habitat.
As for these cunts publishing that story and photo, they can fuck off back to Sydney and don’t come back cunts
Must be a nervy paddle each time. Seems like the old adage of “just don’t think about it” is a bit trite for such a spot.
I tried to prepare myself, that if I was ever shot I’d conduct myself “proudly” in case I lived.
I’m most likely screaming during shark tasting…..those fisherman on the rocks would feel more embarrassment for me than grief.
So sorry to hear for all those in the community. I hope the man lived many lifetimes over his existence.