Surfer attacked by suspected Great White shark at Margaret River as it’s revealed SharkSmart’s tagged notifications have been “offline since Wednesday”

"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.