Coroner Rules Shark-Repellent Device Would Have Been Ineffective in Fatal Great White Attack on Surfer

“The surfer on the rocks observed the shark doing figure eights around Steve.”

A coronial inquest into the killing of Steven Payne by a Great White shark while surfing near Esperance, West Oz, in March has found he would’ve died whether or not he was wearing his magnetic Sharkbanz bracelet, a device that claims to repel sharks.

Payne, a thirty-seven-year-old surfer from Melbourne, was five weeks into a six-month vacay around Australia with his girl and dog when he was disappeared by a Great White in chest-deep water, and all filmed by a drone.

Steven Payne, reports the state broadcaster, owned a magnetic bracelet called a Sharkbanz, although he didn’t use it while surfing on the day of the attack.

The Sharkbanz bracelets are championed by shark attack survivor and trad wife Bethany Hamilton and are powered by patented magnetic technology that emits a low-frequency electromagnetic field that disrupts sharks’ electroreceptors.

As Chas Smith reported,

Do you recall how surf brand Modom incorporated Sharkbanz tech into very expensive leashes ($180 in the U.S. $250 in Australia)? Do you recall how our friend’s at Stab jumped in with both feet, thrilling at the product and pushing it through parent company Surfstitch? Oh read a wonderful piece of investigative journalism from the dearly departed Rory Parker here!

Anyway, didn’t matter if Sharkbanz was on or off, said Acting State Coroner Sarah Linton, saying it was “very unlikely any device would be effective. Therefore, even if Steve had been wearing his device or another similar device, it is unlikely to have made any difference to the outcome.

“Steve was sitting on his board a bit further out in the deeper water than the other two men. The water was crystal clear but none of them saw the shark approach, and the two other surfers were only alerted when they noticed the splashing and then saw the large shark already upon Steve.

“They realised immediately that Steve was in trouble. He didn’t make a sound, even at the start of the attack, and it appeared to them both that he was fatally injured and would have been deceased in seconds. The surfer on the rocks observed the shark doing figure eights around Steve. Steve was in the water by this time, with his surfboard floating nearby.

“Steve never made a sound or showed any independent movement and surfer was very sure that Steve was deceased. Steve’s body and the shark then disappeared below the water and there was only Steve’s surfboard left, which started to float out to sea, and blood in the water.”

Happily, Linton also added the chances of being hit and killed by a Great White in West Oz is less one in four million surf days.

“That may be of small comfort to the families of those people who unfortunately realise that risk, but it is also important when talking about people like Steve,” she said.

For perspective, it was the fourth fatal shark attack in Australia in seventy-two days and the fourth fatal attack by a Great White in the area.

In 2020, local surfer Andrew Sharpe was disappeared by a “monster” Great White, a day when witnesses reported the water turning red one kilometre away. 

That attack came three years after teenager surfer Laticia Brouwers died in front of her family after being hit by a Great White in 2017, where Sean Pollard had an arm and another hand bitten off by a Great White in 2014 and a few clicks away from where diver Gary Johnson was killed by a White, also in 2020.

An inquest into the death also revealed Payne was in Streaky Bay a few days earlier being killed and was tossing up whether or not to surf at Granites, the same joint local surfer Lance Appleby was disappeared by a Great White in January and where, the previous year, Tod Gendle was hit, killed and disappeared by a fifteen-foot Great White while surfing among a crowd of a dozen surfers.