"We need to come to terms with the fact that this is an apex, ambush, opportunistic predator and it is a very dangerous animal."
The middle-aged surfer Brad Ross, whose life was briefly threatened by the arrival of a feisty Great White shark measuring roughly fifteen feet three days ago, has kept a real low profile since the attack.
Instead it’s been left to his pal Kane Douglas to do the media rounds to explain that, yeah, Brad is quietly processing the attack back at home with his fam, all of whom appear to be surfers, but a little sad his fav shooter is busted.
“It was such a big shark, when you see the footage of it, it’s like something you’d see in South Australia,” Douglas told the state broadcaster.
Two hours after the attack, a five-metre Great White set off one of the non-lethal SMART (Shark-Management-Alert-in-Real-Time) drum lines nearby, which consist of an anchor, two buoys, a baited hook, and a satellite-linked GPS communications unit with a triggering magnet, dragging the equipment almost a mile away from where it was attached to the seabed.
The baited hook was removed and the Great White taken a click offshore and released.
The Lennox Head surf journalist Steve Shearer, better known as Longtom and whose literary obituary you can read here, was the voice of reason in a story by the left-tilting state broadcaster on the spike in Great White encounters on the North Coast.
I know the science is not completely settled on that, but then we are starting to see more and more of these interactions, encounters and, unfortunately, attacks,” Longtom said.
The pendulum of public opinion went too far when Jaws came out as seeing sharks as these blood thirsty predators, but then it probably swung too far the other way, saying that they are harmless and they are not interested in us. We do need to come to terms with the fact that this is an apex, ambush, opportunistic predator and it is a very dangerous animal and we need to be aware of that.”
And from Greg Webber, shaper to the stars, once hopeful of building game-changing wavepools etc,
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don’t forget that nettle guy,LOL?
To be fair, you weren’t exactly Ghandi in those exchanges.
Good stories.
I like your writing, it’s good from a literary and entertainment standpoint. Maybe get some $ from BG if you copy/paste them now.
I’m just amazed at your penchant for aliases and AKA’s.
Always had a problem with “you’re more likely to be struck by lightning”. Fair if the assumption is that we’re going out in thunderstorms with the same frequency that we’re in the ocean. But if this includes the majority (billions) of people that are exposed to storms but don’t recreate in the ocean then this is a shit statistic.
It’s one of those times where you wonder how people got so dumb collectively. Amount of times my mates have quoted me stats that make no sense is off chops. These are guys who finished school at 16 and/or failed basic maths. Forget about economics or other subjects in which stats were studied. Suddenly they’re pulling out stats like they’re Stephen fucking Hawking.
Worst thing is, when you’re up the pub having a $15 schooner and a laugh, you don’t wanna be that cunt who has to stop the fun, tut tut tut, waggle your finger and explain the gaping holes in their borrowed stats. Borrowed from some equally dumb useless dropout cunt on Instaface.
Funny thing is, most of my mates on the NSW north coast are now saying the same fucking thing I’ve been saying for years – there’s too many of the cunts out there, and attacks are becoming far too frequent, to just shoo shoo it away and pretend it’s a beat up.
see below…kill all the whales?
You (Gila Kontol, John Dory, Blowin, Craig Brokensha, thermalben, Carcharodon Dundee, or whatev’s alias you are using this year) and Jackoff Semen Cuntyhan are getting a little loose with the Swellnet links.
al gore promised me an apocalypse, v. disappointed
…and Putin keeps promising WW3…whats taking so long
This is the only drone patrol I want scouting for large great whites https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
What a beauty she must be…’cept all the mate marks being 50+
Hmm I’ll wait to see what reddit says before forming an opinion here.
Unless I get eaten first.
No Whites at Crescent bruz
Great White Range Rovers
I get it now, we gunna poach the sharks alive in the boiling water, like, real soon.
It’s actually pretty funny to me reading Webber’s comment. Been saying to my mate on NSW north coast for years that I ain’t surfing some of the spots we used to and he wants to. Then he quotes me random statistics that make no logical sense. Then I tell him, it ain’t coz of the stats and the likelihood of death by Jaws and yada yada yada. It’s coz I can’t fucken relax when I’m out surfing and every fucking splsh and shadow and sound and lone paddle back out stresses the fucken shit outta me these days up there.
If you can’t relax when you’re surfing, look at the sun, and savour the salt fumes without your mind wandering to your leg being amputated by a prehistoric beast every 10 seconds, then I’m good. Count me out.
Lo and fucken behold if old Mr. Webber up above the line hasn’t just echoed my sentiments. I’ll be quoting Webber next time my mate wants to paddle out XXXX at dawn.
Pretty crazy there was a time when Whites were a curio, a rarity in close coastal waters around those parts and you’d freak if you saw a six-foot bronzie.
People even getting buzzed in my area now, unprecedented.
Many seal colonies for them to feast at, but it was previously thought that they would snack and bail. Like maccas drive through.
Xox
Turn of the century I was surfing Tallows way up the beach by myself every day. Not a care in the world. Boulders too. Caba? Blackrock? Fingal Causeway? Pffft didn’t even cross my mind that underwater predators might be lurking, let alone chomping.
Now? My mates mention any of those places for a dawny and I vomit if my feet get near the sand, let alone in the water. For a grizzled old cunt like me, surfing is meditation, time away from my phone, time away from the shit that lives on land called modern society…if I’m more stressed in the water than out, I’d rather go for a walk. Or live in Japan…
I heard that you’re big in Japan.
Some guys like to surf big waves to show their machismo. I like walking around public onsens with a little towel on my head.
I saw the longest scrotum on an ancient Japanese guy at a Nozawa Onsen public onsen some years ago. Should have been in the Circus. Pendulous. The image has been burned into my retinas forever.
Pendulously stupendous. Warm water, age, and freedom from underwear at the onsens seem to give gravity an extra bit of oomph. Explains why lots of elderly Japanese blokes are bow-legged…
Somewhat naively and stoopidly, as a kid growing up surfing, I always thought Whites were cold water beasts. Found only in the freezing seas off Vicco, Tassie, South Oz. Sydney? Newcastle? Goldy? Maybe a grey nurse. Bull shark. Perhaps. All good.
Well fuck me if a 5m White hasn’t just swum into the cove at Caba in waist high water and chomped a fucking board in half.
If only stoopidity and naivety carried into our adult lives. Oh wait…
I think the GWS population was at an all time low, during the 70’s and 80’s, because there was very little food/whales migrating North from Antartica…in 82 there are 300 whales counted….30ooo + in 2025…..so now lots of food for the GWS’s…..so we are starting to see normal again , with the increase in Juveniles…..
So to stop the whites kill all the whales??
Dunno what the solution is mate, I really don’t. But I keep coming back to a very simple fact: look how much ocean there is. Look at all that blue on a world map. Surely, surely, there must be a way we can keep sharks from coming within say, 1km of every beach without killing them or other forms of marine life. It’s not like we’re stealing 90% of their habitat if we did something that prevented them from getting too close.
Don’t kill ’em, but don’t let ’em anywhere near our beaches/points either. Win win?
Don’t you live in Japan?
Yeah. Bring the fam back at least once a year to see my mum up near the Goldy.