"This is the moment an ocean predator launches… the surfer's board seen flying as the man is bitten on his leg.”

Yesterday morn, as you might’ve already heard, a surfer was hit by a Great White shark while surfing one of Margaret River’s best surf spots, a joint called Boat Ramp just south of where the annual Margaret River Pro is held.

Locals say the place can hold up to fifteen feet and has notes of Second Reef Pipe, a chip shot into a barrel that’ll test the stomach of any surfer. 

The man, who is in his twenties, was attacked, but not bitten in half as usually happens in these waters, and had to make his way almost six hundred yards to shore, bleeding like hell from a leg wound. There, an off-duty nurse attempted to stop the bleeding. 

“Shocked onlookers” drove the man to Margs hospital before being transferred to the bigger Bunbury Regional hospital one hundred clicks north. A Great White was seen in the area shortly afterwards and all beaches between Gas Bay and Margaret River Mouth were closed. 

Wild, enough, yeah, but the terrific collision between Great White and surfer was captured on film, an explosion that would be impossible to believe if you weren’t privy to vision of the event. 

Witnesses said the man had lost a hell of a lot of blood by the time he reached the beach but praised the surfer’s bravery and said “he saved his own life.” 

It’s the seventh shark attack in West Oz this year.

"It's pumping! Go!"

In one of the more candid moments in the heavily curated lives of John John and Nathan Florence, we find the brothers amid a moment of great tension over Nathan’s tardiness as John John waits to surf very good Jeffrey’s Bay.

I’m in camp John John.

Is there a greater frustration than standing there, suited to the hilt, board under your arm as pals wander aimlessly, fiddling with toys, cameras, wondering about what wetsuit to wear, board to ride, as the waves pump, the crowds fill in etc?

“Let’s go, it’s absolutely pumping,” says John John.

Nathan, working the controls of his little helicopter says, “I just got the sickest clip.”

John John, thirty now can you believe and with two world titles strapped around his waist, has always been the brother who would  jump out of bed first, his heart beating fast and his mouth wet with the desire to do good.

Nathan, who is twenty eight, may be mad but he is serious about it. And he may be without a soul. But he is not without a heart.

Eventually, Nathan gets rubbered and waxed and the brothers prowl the lineup like tigers.

Essential.

"If you want to go swimming in a dead ocean, go to wave pool. If you want to be part of something that’s alive, you’ve gotta be prepared."

A surfer in his twenties is in a stable condition at Bunbury Hozzy after being attacked by a suspected Great White at Boat Ramps this morning. 

The man was surfing with two others and hit around 8:45am. He swam to shore and went to a nearby cafe for help. An off-duty nurse stemmed the bleeding of what our source describes as a “great big gash” and he was driven to Margs hospital before being transferred to the bigger Bunbury hospital one hundred clicks north. A Great White was seen in the area shortly afterwards and all beaches between Gas Bay and Margaret River Mouth are now closed. 

It’s since been revealed that SharkSmart’s tagged shark notifications have been offline since Wednesday ‘cause of a tech fault, which is the achilles heel of the whole there’s-gotta-be-better-ways-to-keep-shark-attacks-down-than-culling-the-beasts. All it takes is one outage, no one knows what the hell is out there and boom. 

Boat Ramps, if y’didn’t know, is one of the best waves in the area. On an eight-to-fifteen-foot south swell, it’s a fair enough facsimile of Second Reef Pipe says one former tour surfer with “massive barrels on the inside bowl.”

DPIRD officers are currently investigating a reported shark bite incident at Gnarabup, near Margaret River. See more: https://t.co/1kDzCJqb5c

— Surf Life Saving WA (@SLSWA) July 24, 2023

The Margaret River region is notorious for its booming Great White population although when world champion Brazilian surfers Italo Ferreira and Gabriel Medina refused to surf a CT even there in 2018 after two nearby attacks in one day, they were described as “weak and conniving” by the celebrated Western Australia author Tim Winton. 

“As someone who’s surfed all over the world and with the machismo and bravado of Brazilians in particular, I thought it was amazing how cowardly those guys were,” he said. “Look, not everybody wants to be in the water the day after two guys have failed the taste test around the corner, but I thought it was a really low act on behalf of those two guys…I just think  if you want to go swimming in a dead ocean, go to a pool, go to a wave pool. If you want to be part of something that’s alive, and that’s what surfing is to most of us, then you’ve gotta be prepared, you’re doing that in a living ecosystem. If you want to kill all the sharks you’re just going to kill the oceans. It’s one of the few places in the world where there are actually real waves.”

More on the attack as it comes.