“Stay together! It’s a big f**king one! Head in!”

It ain’t a stretch to say that Australia’s mid-to-far north coast, roughly Forster to Coolangatta, is crawling with Great White sharks. They call it a Great White Superhighway. 

You might’ve even lost count of the the surfers killed by Great Whites in Australia in the last few years. 

A brief timeline. 

(And it don’t include attacks that didn’t kill the surfer, like Joe Hoffman, the twenty-five-year-old shredder whose arm was destroyed by a Great White at Crescent Head or upcoming pro surfer Kai Mckenzie, 23, who lost his right leg to a Great White  in July.)

Surfer, in this twenties, dead on the beach after a Great White hit at Shelly Beach, Coffs Harbour, a little south of Byron Bay.

Mark Sanguinetti, 59, hit by Great White, killed, Tuncurry, NSW, May 18, 2021.

Andrew Sharpe, 52, hit by a Great White at Kelpies in Esperance, October 9, 2020. Never seen again.

Nick Slater, 46, hit, killed by a Great White at the Supabank, Queensland, September 8, 2020.

Mani Hart-Deville, 15, hit, killed by a Great White, Wooli Beach, NSW, July 11, 2020.

Rob Pedretti, 60, hit, killed, by a Great white, Salt Beach, NSW, June 7, 2020.

In the latest encounter, Kye Wilkinson was wearing his GoPro when he got bumped by a fifteen-foot Great White while surfing Emerald Beach in Coffs Harbour, real close to where a surfer was killed in 2021/

“It come up and hit the bottom of my board,” Wilkinson told Channel Nine. “I half fell backwards. I didn’t know what it was to start with. I looked under me, and saw pretty clearly what it was.”

The footage is pretty wild. 

“Hey guys. A Great White just went past. It came up right next to me,” Wilkinson says.

“Stay together! It’s a big fucking one! Head in!”

“Usually you see them once, then they’re off,” he said. “But to see one three or four times is pretty scary.”

Are there more Great Whites around now than  there were thirty years ago? It’s the simple mathematics of what happens when you protect an apex predator for twenty-five years.

After the fourth attack on a surfer in 2018, and just before a Gold Coast real estate agent was hit and killed at the Superbank, Steve “Longtom” Shearer asked,

Are we at a tipping point where we say, maybe it’s time to take the gloves off? 

History proves there ain’t no tipping point.

For despite everything, despite the overwhelming evidence that Great Whites patrol beaches in abundance and with impunity, nothing, not the roll call of surfers dying, literally, in the mouths of sharks, including a seventeen-year-old girl and a fifteen-year-old boy, will shift a perception in the essential perfection and mythology of the Great White. 

"I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community."

If you’ll remember, the Harris-Waltz ticket was destroyed two months before its November 6 trouncing when Kelly Slater was photographed posing with Trump advisor Tulsi Gabbard outside Khalil Rafati’s Sun Life Organics in Las Vegas, where Kelly was attending UFC Noche.

Slater’s pivot delivered millions of middle-aged male votes to the Republican Party headed by popular television star and businessman Donald Trump.

Tulsi Gabbard had long been a sword in the side of the AGP-friendly, no-borders-for-all Democratic Party. She claimed the supposed party of the Quaker progressive was under control of  an “elitist cabal of warmongers” and driven by what she said was “cowardly wokeness.” Tulsi wasn’t real hot on its leaders being coy on Islamic terrorism, either. 

Tulsi Gabbard’s political career began in 2002 when she was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives, becoming the youngest person ever elected at 21.

Gabbard later served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, deploying to Iraq and Kuwait, and became the first female combat vet in Congress after her election to the U.S. House of Reps in 2013.

In August, Gabbard, a common sense centrist who supports native rights in the US, but ain’t afraid to call Islamic terrorism what it is, threw her political muscle behind Donald Trump, a move that highlighted the parlous state of the Dems.

On Wednesday, Tulsi was appointed as Director of National Intelligence by President-elect Donald Trump, the new prez writing:

“For over two decades, Tulsi has fought for our Country and the freedoms of all Americans. I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community, championing our Constitutional Rights, and securing Peace through Strength. Tulsi will make us all proud!”

Tulsi Gabbard and Kelly Slater meet up next week for a celebrity Green Beret Tactical Challenge.

Do you believe important matters of state will be discussed tween the pair, Slater sharing important intelligence gleaned from his years on Instagram?

And, given Slater’s environmental bona fides, able to turn deserts into pretend oceans, sandals made from turtle dreams etc, might there even be a role for the 11-time Champ in the new administration?

Heady days.