Shark attack in Australia
Witnesses said the attack, at a beach called Fishery Bay, came when the unnamed man was surfing about 350 meters (385 yards) from shore. The shark, a great white about six meters (19 feet) long, came up behind the man and bit. There were about a dozen others in the water near the vicinity of the attack.
“I was just watching the shark go out to the ocean with his board still attached,” a witness told local media. “Obviously the shark still had his leg and he was still swimming around with it.”
The weather was overcast at the time of the attack, a condition many feel may make the possibility of an attack more likely, and not just because the water is darker and it is therefore more difficult to see a shark approach. As the Inquisitr reports, the conditions may confuse sharks, “which use sunlight to hunt.”
“It is widely believed among surfers that shark attacks are the result of mistaken identity, as the silhouette of a surfer can sometimes resemble that of a seal,” the Inquisitr wrote. “That assertion is currently being studied in South Africa, home to one of the world’s largest populations of great white sharks.”
Great white shark attacks
Other recent shark attacks on Aussie beaches include one at Cheynes Beach in Albany, four hours from Perth, last December. A 17-year-old, Jay Muscat, was spear-fishing with Matt Pullella when a great white attacked. Pullella was attacked first but suffered only minor injuries, the shark then killed Muscat. Pullella stuck a spear gun in the shark’s mouth and fired and it swam off.
Two months ago a 41-year-old Japanese man was living and surfing in the New South Wales town of Ballina, Australia had both his legs bitten off by a great white. His friends got him to shore but with both legs gone, despite the application of tourniquets, he quickly bleed to death.
Most years there are about two shark attack fatalities in Australia, but this was the seventh death there in the past 14 months.
