“The show is over in South Australia. The population of sharks is growing steadily and rapidly.”
A teenage surfer from South Australia, Khai Cowley, is dead after being attacked by a Great White shark while surfing at Ethels on the state’s Yorke Peninsula a little after one pm yesterday.
Khai Cowley, a popular fifteen year old who had recently been awarded the “most outstanding grom performer” at his boardriders club, was killed after his leg was bitten off by the Great White.
As is the norm these days, a hero made sure the boy wasn’t abandoned in his fight.
“The shark took his leg and so another local guy ran out, jumped on his board and paddled out to help him,” a witness told the Adelaide Advertiser. “The shark was circling them as the guy pulled the boy out of the water. There was a lot of bood. He brought him to shore but I think it was too late by then.”
His horrified dad watched from the beach as paramedics tried too save the kid.
After news of his death became known, locals drew large love heart shapes in the sand.
“They’re (the family) very well known in the surf community, which just makes this news so much more tragic,” Port Noarlunga local Luke Winter The Advertiser.
Two months ago, 55-year-old surfer Tod Gendle was killed and disappeared by a fifteen-foot Great White at Granites, twenty clicks out of Streaky Bay, South Australia, seven hundred clicks north-west of Adelaide.
Earlier in the year, and just a hundred clicks south, local school teacher Simon Baccanello was killed by a Great White while surfing at Walkers Rocks in Elliston.
A brave soul, Baccanello warned others to split as the shark started swimming towards him telling terrified kids in the lineup, “Don’t worry, get yourself to shore”.
A local expert, who keeps his name outta these things ‘cause the don’t-hurt-the-sharks-yay-Palestine brigade is gonna light him up and he doesn’t need the headache, says this is only the beginning.
He points to the end of the large mesh gill net fishery, closed for over ten years now, and the protection of the Great White as the culprits.
“It’s going to get worse,” he says. “The show is over in South Australia. The population of sharks is growing steadily and rapidly.”
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Just reading this, though I have read some other news about increasing attacks in S. OZ. Sad news and scary for the surf population. The Palestine comment was fekked tho. We are understandably upset by the death of an adolescent surf mate and therefore, if any thought is given to the reality of Gaza right now, we are also upset by the death of thousands of people, including a high proportion of other adolescents, in an act of revenge that will only prolong a history of bloodshed. And we also lament the unnecessary killing of the Israelis, prompting said act of revenge. This is nothing to trivialize ya fek wit.
Felix
I am a bit perplexed by your continuing attacks on me , with BS about spider and drugs , me /etc……not sure what your personal beef is with me?
It’s not just you, it’s everyone that has had a pay-check from Surfing.
But somehow I doubt he makes his own boards, wetsuits and accessories from scratch and of course has never traveled to another Country to Surf, where he might dare inflict his western ways on an indigenous culture.
One of my best mate’s sons witnessed the whole thing. His description of it does not warrant repeating. I feel terribly for the family and for everyone who witnessed it. If you know Ethels you know its a long way from the carpark on top of the cliff down to the beach, and down to the corner they were surfing. Waves were shit, and everyone came in except Khai. Literally 10mins later…
Rest in peace young lad.
That’s fucking crushing. Poor little dude just chasing that one last wave.
Bet the streaky bay fucken surf school run by blowins from WA is like a ghost town.
Tuna farming and cage diving have had real, huge effects on shark behaviour and human interaction. Anyone with experience and knowledge of the activities from day one knows this is true beyond any doubt. As do the regions abalone divers, who have had to change procedures to try and deal with many more, ever more aggressive, white pointer encounters. Add the growing time that white pointers have been protected to the mix, the result is a no brainer.
The science is in no doubt whatsover also. A recipe for ever increasing, all round disaster.
https://www.sciencedirect.c…
https://www.nationalgeograp…
There was a detailed submission on cage diving to an Australian Parliamentary Enquiry in 2018 by Peter Stephenson, an SA abalone diver with 35 years experience and serious marine science qualifications. It is a download so I can’t give you the direct link but a few searches on cage diving should turn it up. I haven’t found anything on tuna farms yet but will have another.look.
It looks like no links work in this format, so no doubt you haven’t seen my links either.
‘Public relations’ are big business for huge businesses.
https://youtu.be/zOIggDpjY9…
There are many conficts of interest in the area. Owners with multiple licenses, quotas across the board. Incoming funds to govt.
My study links are totally independent, and refer to comprehensive, long term studies on the full gamet of human interaction with large, apex carnivores, and the common ground conclusive findings.
The link works for me and so does yours but I have had problems before.
https://www.forbes.com/site…
Contains an internalink.to the Huveneers stdy on fish pens.
You don’t need to be a scientist to realize more sharks = more competition between sharks for resources = more aggressive sharks. Tuna farming and cage diviing have no correlation other than existing during the same time period.
We are the apex predator and should enjoy the bounty while managing populations.
Don’t remiss “Deep Blue” Starring “LL Fool J. 🤔👨🏻🔬
I can only imagine the pain the poor young lad’s folks are feeling right now. Devastating and sad news. When I was a lot younger, it was all about the environment for me. But in the second half of my life, I’ve become way more humanist. 99.999% of any species that ever lived is now extinct. Humans have always altered the environment, for better or worse. Life goes on. I’m not scared of a growing human population, just the way we deal with it. Living with nature doesn’t mean observing it through the looking glass. Sometimes things need to be killed. Plenty of animal guts in my compost.
RIP, Khai. Huge condolences to his family.
We can cull Palestinian. But we can’t cull sharks. I actually hate environmentalist. They actively call for exterminating humans to save the environment.
Can’t have humans without an “environment”, Clown. And there’s no shortage of humans. They just keep growing and growing. Billion by billion. The numbers of surfers keeps rising as well.
But millions of species of animals, and plants, disappear every year. And that number keeps rising as well, if you believe those stupid scientists. If we somehow prove that humans could continue living our dandy lives of consumerism and genocide without all of those animals and plants then I could agree with your desire to cull all of these scary animals, but all of the evidence published by the dummies who work in the natural sciences suggest that the complete opposite is true. No one wants to see people maimed or killed by sharks but that’s just the reality of life on this beautiful Earth.
People like you are the scum of the world
try not getting personal and see if you can post something intelligible?
Culling Palestinians really???
Yes. You modern people are the sum of all Evil. You put trees before your children. And you are willing to genocide any group the T.V. says is the bad guy. Honestly you people are rotten to the core.
Jeez man get off this train. This is a thread of empathy for a young man who lost his life.
Nice Projection. Your fake empathy to attack people you disagree with is disgusting. Most of the people who post on here are intolerable
Sweet as, I’ll put you on a shadow ban, then you’re just talking to yourself. Feel free to upvote yourself.
So if we are modern people what stage of human evolution do you belong to? Not smart enough for a Neandethal so H. erectus is about your best shot.
haha….you people?
So , how can you say genocide on who?
Says absolute dildo with zero redeeming posts.
So by your logic we should also just let crocodiles roam the streets of far nth Queensland? Something tells me you road cycle and SUP.
Crocodiles are really not that interested in roaming the streets but we have protected them and allowed their population to rise in much the same way as white sharks. They also kill people now and then so what was your point?
because it was a stupid analogy……..how about culling again?
What’s stupid is your smug response. The ‘streets’ in the region I’m referring to was their natural habitat for millions of years. Only in the last 50 or so have we turned much of it into small towns and in doing so had to clear the area of crocs due to their powerful homing instinct (google it), so dickheads like you could eat your ice cream on holiday without being eaten. Still not clear champ?
do you think crocodiles roaming the streets is their natural habitat?
only for around 95 million years…
A sad loss of a young lad, with his whole life in front of him, in such an appalling fashion.
There is obviously a growing problem with this deadly predator in the SA region and clearly some measures need to be put in place. God only knows what they will be though. The Great Australian Bight living up to it’s name in a tragic and horrific way.
yes it’s tragic , but we all know the risks of surfing , and in some areas more than others the risk is higher.
In SA there are huge tuna farms, cage diving ….what affect does that have in concentrating GWS”s?
I say the same fucken thing every time this shit happens. Go and look at a fucking world map and take a long hard look at all the blue. That’s the ocean. There’s fucking ocean everywhere, so surely to fucking Christ authorities can find ways to keep sharks more than a km from land. It’s not like they don’t have anywhere to go.
Build a wall of hooks, build a wall of electronic zaps, build a wall of fucking concrete for all I care. Just keep the cunts from coming within a km of beaches.
Dont you live in japan frank? One of the most fished out zones in the world.
Yeah and I fucken love it. Coz guess what, no fucken fear of getting bitten in half every time I go surfing!
I say create machines that make noises like killer whales. That would keep white sharks at bay I think.
What a tragic nightmare for all involved.
South Australian Great White Jerky. Ill take a case for my friends and I.
Gw’s are not endangered!
Next crazy enviros will put viruses and parasites on the list.
Dried salted shark meat is pretty good if handled right.
That’s really sad news. Poor kid.
My condolences to his family.
Hats off to the guy who paddled out to help. Such a sad outcome.
If the ecosystem was fine for & up to basically the turn of the century & fisheries estimate their numbers have gradually increased over the past 25 years, why wouldn’t their protected species status be fluid pertaining regulation of an acceptable & sustainable number.
Google credit,
In 2018, the CSIRO reported that the total population of white sharks in Eastern Australasia is 5,460, with a potential range between 2,909 and 12,802. The estimated population numbers of adult White Sharks is approximately 750 adults
(within a range from 470-1,030).
If there are upto 13k GWS’s with less 10% being adult, then old mates ‘only the beginning’ statement seems imminent to say the least.
These are just the east coast numbers & 5year old. The south west numbers are estimated at double.
That population is spread over the entire coast from FNQ to SA so is not as threatening as the raw numbers suggest. The error band on the data also indicates a high level of uncertainty. Community opinion these days, for better or worse, is unlikely to support any form of a cull.
Fuck community opinion. Idealistic as it may, governments fundamentally should proactively protect their people.
How much would it really cost to pull in the estimates & then tender out a cull nationally to set annual numbers? Let them keep their kill. I’d rather be eating fresh wild local white shark from my fisho than shit imported from Vietnam.
While they’re at it fuck off all the dog breeds taking of limbs, faces & killing kids too.
Really sad news. Condolences to his family and friends.
Tragic for such a young bloke to lose his life in this way. Very hard on the family and the communities involved. 3 fatal attacks in 6 months may suggests that changes in shark population or behaviour have taken place, but it is more likely just a random fluctuation. Clustering is a feature of random distributions. All of which is no comfort to those confronted by the reality but suggests finding solutions is not necessarily simple as some suggest.
what affect does all the Tuna farms and the cage diving at Neptune island have on the number of GWS ‘s in SA?
Brutus the problem with trying to identify factors in shark attacks is that so few occur over such wide areas that there is simply not enough data to count as significant evidence for most hypotheses. The other factor is that governments will not devote much funding to the issue because the money will produce greater results elsewhere eg road safety, increased public health spending etc
There was data that enabled them to become a protected species in 1996. There must have been an optimal number or band to prevent extinction.
A plan has to have an objective. The objective surely can’t be to just let numbers get uncontrollably to a point where our people’s way of life & tourism industry are eroded to the point of no return. How’s reunion island’s tourism these days..
What we need is environmentalists crossing the floor & advocating for action now. I’d argue that with 1% of the money spent on preventing road toll we’d have a lot more control over outcomes comparably.
If you want to have chance of making a difference start with cage dives burleying and feeding sharks. It is possible to make a good case that it is dangerous. It needs to be done locally. The community should be pretty fired up after the attacks this year so a bit of leadership could go a long way.
Fucking oath
Really, are you serious? You must be daft, it’s THEIR territory, not ours, put tourism and greed first, see what happens, you can’t control mother nature, and trying usually worsens things. You sound like Erik Logan … money money, the great whites don’t care about tourism, they fed on the reefs eons before a damn board hit the water, for “FUN” … they are feeding, living, surviving, you’re “funning” not even worth an argument.
In locations like South Australia, you can have large numbers of Great White and other big sharks or you can have surfing and other ocean recreation activities, but you cannot have both.
No
Truly heartbreaking
one of the greatest fears a father of a young surfer has.