“Four or five surfers pulled him out of the water and it looked like a significant part of his lower half had been attacked.”
It’s getting a little repetitive to write these things, but here we go, a surfer was killed by a suspected Great White shark an hour or so ago on a pretty spring day, this time near famous Dee Why point, home to the late great Shane Herring and Peter Crawford among others.
While details are short and the victim has yet to be formally ID’d, although he is believed to be a well-known local surfer, witnesses report seeing a “circle of people crying” on the stretch of sand up from Dee Why called Long Reef and that “four or five surfers pulled him out of the water and it looked like a significant part of his lower half had been attacked.”
The usual scene on Australian beaches: ambulance, cops, choppers. The prophecy that one day soon the abundance of Great White in shallow coastal Australian waters would make surfing and swimming a risky proposition, the old more likely to be hit by a bolt of lightning long evaporated, seems to be coming true.
Understanding the Risks of Swimming with Great White Sharks
Four weeks back, a nine-year-old kid in Tathra on the NSW South Coast was attacked by what was described as a “giant shark” near the site of the fatal mauling by a Great WHite of a swimmer.
The kid recounted the attack simply: “I suddenly started drowning.”
At the start of the year, and after the death of the death of Streaky Bay local Lance Appleby, killed by a Great White shark, the fourth fatal attack on a surfer by a White in less than two years, one shark expert decreed that surfing on South Australia’s west coast was now over.
Get the fuck out of the water and start thinking about doing something else’, because this is over here,” said Jeff Schmucker, one of the area’s most prominent surfers and fishermen.
Schmucker said each new attack “inflames or reignites everyone’s emotions and experiences, a new fear coming over you.”
Ironically, shark nets on the beach had just been set for the summer. The stretch of beach also has three SMART drumlines and is patrolled by drone.
More on the Dee Why attack as it comes.