Rage teamrider Kai McKenzie joins a rapidly growing group of surfers whose lives have been irrevocably changed by the sharp spike in Great White activity.
It’ll be news to nobody who lives around Port Macquarie that fifteen tagged Great Whites had been swimming around the joint this past week.
And, yesterday, Rage team rider Kai McKenzie joined a rapidly growing group of surfers from around Port whose lives have been irrevocably changed by the sharp spike in Great White activity.
Last year, Toby Beggs lost his right leg, and part of his left, in a wild, multi-pronged attack where he was dragged underwater twice by a twelve-foot Great White.
In 2020,thirty-five-year-old surfer Chantelle Doyle was hit by a ten-foot White at Shelly Beach, Port Mac. Her husband jumped off his board, climbed on the shark and beat hell out of it, saving her life.
“It was unbelievable, the scream was incredible and there was splashing everywhere,” witness Jed Toohey said, “Mark, her partner, got her up on the board. Mark was a hero. He started laying into the shark because it wouldn’t let go. He saved her life. He got off his board and started punching the shark. If he hadn’t put his own life at risk, it would have been strong enough to take her out to sea.”
Shortly after the attack on Kai McKenzie by a ten-foot Great White, Kai’s leg washed up on the beach.
Fast-thinking locals put the leg on ice and both Kai, and his leg, were airlifted to John Hunter hospital where surgeons hope to re-attach the severed limb.
As I wrote yesterday, to call the stretch of coast from Forster in the south to Byron Bay five hours north a Great White Superhighway is to employ the most fantastic powers of understatement.
Pull up to any beach on the six-hundred clicks stretch, whether it’s Tuncurry,Crescent Head, Crowdy Head, Wooli, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay, Ballina or Kingscliff, and you’ll be in waters bloodied by known killer Great White sharks.
And, for Kai McKenzie, it’s going to be a long and expensive road back to some kind of normality. As such, a GoFundMe was set up yesterday and, already, 96k of a 100k goal has been reached.
As you can imagine, the upcoming medical expenses for his recovery and rehabilitation is something no one would ever be prepared for. The funds raised will go in assisting Kai in every aspect of his recovery.
Please dig deep for this family to assist with Kai’s recovery and rehabilitation. I am a neighbour of The McKenzie’s. They are a local family with hearts of gold that would never expect or ask anything of anybody, so let’s give back and show them that they have the communities support in this.
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.
you take the square root of one less than number of toes on the leg that was lost. Then multiply that number by three.
Unfortunately they don’t use inches here.
poor cunt , i know what he is going through , i had my head bitten of by a shark once and they found it washed up on a beach in Taiwan , but the best bit is , i got them to sew it back on sideways so cunts can never tell if im going left or right. Really fucks with the lineup.
if you don’t surf, don’t start.
if you surf, fucking QUIT before a shark gets you
Or worse yet, this could happen while surfing
https://youtu.be/NQBPgJQhQHc?si=a4YpxsuYKTfQYO9V
And grab the rails, be strong and face whatever comes your way as the experience will be one for the ages!
These are the options for my bum as I read BG. Pretty sure these are even trans inclusive. Life is good.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
That’s some poor buffet etiquette. I’d be insulted.
Finding a bitten off leg holy effing hell
Right? I kept reading to see if this was some sort of a joke but it doesn’t appear so. That they put it on ice and will try to reattach it?!?! :-0
possible if done in less than 6ish hours of losing the limb. even though, you’re only ultimately regaining 80% of previous limb functionality at best.
80% surprisingly high!
hope the kid gets there
I’m not going surfing on the north coast. Fuck that!
It’s weird to come out and just say it, but sharks only exist because we, as humans, allow them to. Their proliferation of numbers in recent years has occurred precisely because we have allowed it to by implementing laws of protection after their numbers dwindled dangerously low.
Now they are killing us.
One of the apex predators of the ocean is killing the apex predator of the land because the apex predator of the land wanted to protect apex predators of the ocean. Can’t make this shit up.
Time has come for the apex predator of the land to say enough’s enough. Kill, cull, do whatever the fuck you want govts., but sticking a fancy little tag in dorsal fins so we can watch where they go swim-swim is doing sweet fuck all to stem attacks, save lives, or stop ocean-goers like Kai losing legs.
Got to disagree.
Sharks live in the ocean we just play in it.
i respect the real locals
Mike Tyson saying , everyone has a game plan , till i punch them in the face.
I’m not asking for your agreement. I’m asking useless govts. around the world to do something actually effective other than sticking some scientific tags in their fins and helping them on their merry way.
Nah, just use the taste test and your good. We are entering their world for recreation. Culling, killing etc are just ignorant. You might be onto something with the dorsal tags but no fucking way you will tag them all. How about everybody just man up and realize you could die if you enter water that tastes like salt. Go figure.
I take it not non stop shark attacks at your local?
Wouldn’t matter but plenty of sharks around here. You are stepping into their world and it’s both ignorant and foolish to think that killing them is some sort of acceptable solution as opposed to just being an idiotic maneuver that will result in the destruction of the exact thing you are killing for.
You’ll find it would matter. The conversations have changed in a lot of these Australian towns where people have died or are limbless.
Yep. Plenty of north coast towns which present as hippy, where kids have very suss names, and where they are otherwise as green as the weed they choof, wouldn’t protest a monitored GW cull. You know, for science, not revenge. Just thin em out a touch and scare the fuckers off for a while to put a stop to the cluster of chomping. Thing is, the bell end suit and ties in charge always fuck it up and never end up getting the Whites…Tigers and Dolphins pay the price for the great whites bloodlust so often, any thought of pest control has become a joke. So round and round we go with more and more of us getting stalked, deformed and worse by fuckwit fish known as the Great Whites.
And the whole “it’s their world” argument is valid, mostly… One attack, fuck off. But like, 10 in two years, and countless near misses.. Gimme a break. Where there is something out of control, from fish to noxious weeds, or Rabbits, or Kangaroos, or whatever, the apex of all apex’s use our big brain and big weapons to mitigate.
Mixed reaction around here the last few days. I definitely skipped going back to queens yesterday and did some yard work instead.
Hoping for a good outcome for the kid, will be throwing some coin his way come payday.
Their fault. Stay out of the ocean if you can’t accept the possibility that a shark might bite you. I have surfed for countless years and was never bitten but I always knew it could happen. The same applies to flying or driving your car. The ocean however belongs to marine life which humans are not a part of.
Stick to commenting about football.
Statistics show that the number of attacks are largely in proportion to the number of surfers. We have just as many sharks in South Africa but a whole lot fewer surfers. And therefore fewer incidents. But statistically the risks are similar. Regardless, anything other than using technology to alert us to their presence, is environmentally ignorant and contradicts our love of the ocean.
Understand why this argument if offered as a reason for increase in attacks DP, but it isn’t true – or not for everywhere, at least. The ‘Shark crisis’ in Reunion started in 2011. The number of surfers dropped dramatically, same for swimmers, especially through to 2014/2015. But the attacks continued until 2019.
What happened in Reunion contradicts the consensus reached by shark experts globally and cant be used as a valid example. This same applies to what happened in Coffee bay in South Africa. It’s like saying rising temperatures from climate change isn’t happening because of individual anecdotal examples at certain places in the world.
It can’t contradict the consensus reached by experts, when Reunion has been part of international shark attack data, used by said experts. It is absolutely not anecdotal evidence. Dan Duane’s excellent podcast Shark Attacks in Paradise (spotify) gives a clearer picture of possible reasons. Numbers of surfers/swimmers in the water is not central to what he presents.
It does. Do your research
Have already done plenty
Clearly not enough or at least on nothing that contradicts your view
But perhaps most important is to recognise the Politics behind thinking about sharks so try this – https://saveourseasmagazine…
Here’s another. This time from the US that highlights the consensus regarding incident numbers being related to the number of people in the water – https://www.floridamuseum.u…
So, according to that article, increased attacks in part due “a combination of more of people being in the ocean each year and a stronger emphasis placed on reporting bites. ” Nonsense because it also reports on 3 attacks on the Eyre Peninsula. Not exactly a Snapper Rocks type increase in crowds down there in the last 20 years. There hasn’t been a significant increase in crowds around Port Macquarie either i.e there has been a large surfing population there for decades.
Surely you understand that incidents at individual locations are not relevant in isolation and that the consensus is reached by the data from all shark incidents.
But they’re not incidents in isolation are they? Put together, they make up this data. None of the places that make up the data have suddenly seen significant increases in ocean recereation users. None. In particular the East coast of Oz, or NSW. This is not an individual location but a vast coastline. Shark attacks have gone up significantly there in recent years. The number of people using the ocean for recreation has not.
Cmon use your brains. Even multiple examples that do not match the overall body of evidence are not accurate reflections of the primary reason
The author of that article, which isn’t in fact a research paper, is Jiayu Liang, a “Science writer”. Nowhere is it stated that she’s a shark research expert. Her Linked in also says she’s based in Boston, Mass.
What science writers do is report on scientific matters they investigate and report on. It doesn’t matter that she is not a shark expert or whether she is based in Boston.
Of course it matters. She has zero experience in relation to studying shark behaviour. You said it yourself; she’s simply reporting something she investigated. In the ever so complex world of shark attacks, this does not mean that what she says is true.
Aaah I get it. You’re a fake news advocate who only respects Joe Rogan science
haha yes you guessed it, I’m Kelly Slater
Definitely as persistent
Here’s another link that refers to the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) which is ‘the world’s only scientifically documented, comprehensive database of all known shark attacks. Initiated in 1958, there are now more than 6,800 individual investigations covering the period from the early 1500s to the present’
https://www.nationalgeograp…
The idea, stated in the Nat Geo article, that tourism is the reason for an increase in attacks is, frankly, laughable. Gavin Naylor’s assertion “more people in the water you… get more bites” is stating the obvious, but is also just an incredibly simplistic way of of analysing what is an incredibly complex problem. Increase in numbers of people in the water is quite clearly not the main reason for the recent attacks in Port Macquarie, the NSW coast, South West WA, or anywhere. Call these ‘individual locations’ all you want. But numbers of people in the water is not the main reason for attacks.
It’s obviously not just tourism but an overall increase of people in certain zones than in others.
Well the article did say tourism. But that’s an interesting point if it is referring to certain zones, as I referred to that too… but that was dismissed as incidents at individual locations. So, presumably, Port Macquarie and the coast up from there is part of one of these ‘certain zones’? Even though there has been no signifcant change in the surfing population there in the past 30 years, attacks have gone up signifcantly in the last ten or so years…
It’s just plain dumb to keep highlighting individual beaches to demonstrate your point.
You said “certain zones ” yourself. Port Macquarie is not an individual beach, nor is the coast from mid north to northern NSW of course. Another quote about Reunion’s problem (know you don’t like “individual locations” but true shark researchers do). From your own Dr Ryan Daly (Oeanographic research Inst, Durban) : “I don’t know if it’s due to an increase in interactions or a change in the behaviour of sharks. It could be an environmental stress, ovefishing, climate change, pollution or habitat degradation.”
There you go again
Dr Arnault Gauthier (phd on the electro-sensory system of sharks): “Anyone who says they know the exact reason for the increase in interactions is a liar….We simply don’t know. It’s probably mutifactorial….there are many different reasons. Nobody knows the whole truth.” Quotes from Surfers Journal Dec/Jan 2023/2024
There you go again using individual examples to prove your discredited point
Add up the individual examples and what do you get? Global data. Either that or maybe the global data comes from the wave pool in Waco?
Haha, DYI science rules and pools are definitely your happy place.
and a link to the ISAF (see my earlier response) as well as the contact person you should speak to – https://www.floridamuseum.u…
The whole notion of “it’s their world, you can die, man up, face the facts it’s the ocean” bla bla bla is so simplistic and narrow-minded. We go into African savannahs, we use heavy vehicles and take guns. We go into bear territory, we take spray, whistles, bells, guns etc, we go into almost any place that’s potentially dangerous due to animals or dodgy humans, we arm ourselves and prepare ourselves for protection.
As a species, we fight and/or kill anything that threatens our existence. It’s basic survival. Every capable living thing does. Lucky for animals, our advanced abilities enable us to act on reason and not just obliterate and terminate every single threat into extinction.
But like it or not, our existence includes the ocean. If it wasn’t for our use of waters, Australia, the US, Canada etc etc wouldn’t exist as they do today. Fishermen, cargo carriers, scientists, big oil companies, leisure lovers of marine activities yada yada, we all use the ocean and coexist with it. It’s a huge part of the lives of billions of people.
To shrug your shoulders and say, “oh too bad, you entered the water, sharks are there, always a chance you might get chomped…” is naive. Almost archaic considering the science and capabilities we have at our disposal to find solutions.
To be clear, I don’t in anyway disagree with your general message. If anything about this is naive and archaic, its thinking that there needs to be a culling or killing to achieve that goal. It would be far preferable to come up with a different solution given “the science and capabilities we have at our disposal”. And just maybe, trying to eliminate a species for our own recreational pursuits doesn’t actually threaten our survival or existence.
Saying ‘man up, face facts, we enter their territory so we could die’ etc, MIGHT hold true for places like South Oz or the Transkei in South Africa. But this argument ignores the significant increase in attacks in areas where there were few/ hardly any/ none before. If there’s an increased risk, it’s natural to look for some kind of answer to reduce it again. And if you’ve lived in an area where attacks suddenly have gone up, then asking for sharks in that area, to be fished (rather than tagged) is a pretty common reaction.
You clearly missed that lesson in biology about biodiversity.
You clearly missed the part where I said, …”do whatever the fuck you want govts…” I gave three options, number three was open-ended. I guess you didn’t (want to) see that bit…
What we can clearly see is that tags on dorsal fins do sweet fuck all to stop attacks. Great for research, woopdy fucking do, not so great for saving legs and limbs. They can stick a gold-plated golf flag in the top of their fins that ding-a-ling-lings when they swim for all I care, but the time has come for a solution that puts a halt to the ever increasing attacks around the world.
No I didn’t miss that but just like your response to my comment it’s clear that you fit into the fuck nature if it doesn’t suit me category.
Proliferation has also coincided with boom in recreational fishing.