Diver stalked by Great White thirty metres off popular surf beach…
Surfers and swimmers, divers, frolickers, whatever, are being warned to stay out of the water near Margaret River after a diver was stalked by a Great White shark just thirty metres off the beach at around four-thirts yesterday.
The diver was bumped by what he describes as an eight-foot great white, a juvie you’d presume, notoriously inquisitive fish, while lookin’ for crayfish off the Gnarabup Boat Ramp, near Margaret River.
Understanding the Threat of the Great White Shark
The incident comes eight days after a White dragged a wing-foiler into the depths a little further out. The foiler, Andy McDonald, “was suddenly sucked under the water, followed by fierce whipping and splashing on the surface.”
“Just out of the blue — bang — it felt like a freight train,” McDonald told the state press. “”Something came up from under the water and just propelled me up into the sky. I fell onto it, it was wrapped around me. You’ve got two leashes, you’ve got a leash around your waist and one on your wrist, and it was like in me, and I was like punching it. Then I had my sail, and I jumped up onto my sail just to get out of the water, and then I started yelling for help.”
In 2023, at the same joint, a surfer was hit from below as per the White’s modus operandi, survived the blast and paddled to shore where he limped to a nearby cafe and an off-duty nurse stemmed the bleeding while he was driven to Margs hospital. His eight-one Gunther Rohn was belted to hell.
Last month, and three hours drive north in the capital city Perth, surfers were warned to stay out of the water due to “multiple White shark detections.”
These included a chopper spotting a fifteen-foot White that was circling offshore near Hillarys Marina, two tagged Whites pinging the Scarborough detector, a tagged Great White at Mullaloo, a tagged great white at Ocean Reef and a tagged great white at Sorrento.
The last fatal attack on a surfer in Western Australian was in March when Steve Payne was disappeared by a Great White shark in chest-deep water in front of his girlfriend, a drone operator capturing the attack.
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 hit by the Great White at Wharton Beach, eighty clicks east of Esperance.
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.
Across the country in September, Mercury Psillakis, brother of the noted Australian shaper Mike Psillakis, was killed by a Great White shark surfing his local there just north of Dee Why Point.
And the list grows,
RIP, Zac, Paul Tadashi, Rob, Mani, Mark, Tim, Simon, Nick, Cameron, Jevon, Paul, Nick, Jarrod, Peter, Sam, Simon, Tod, Khai, Lance, Ken, Bradley, Geoffrey, Brian, Nicholas, Kyle, Bryn, George, Peter, Ben, Chris, Jay, Ben, Doreen, Laeticia, Gary, Andrew, Paul, Steven, Mercury.