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.