I read the coronors reports on the South Australian diver who had his right leg taken off at the hip while wearing a Shark Pod. The coronor found that he was not using it correctly. The instructions say you have to have it on the whole time. There was a culture where divers would feel safe on the botton and turn the unit off to preserve its power, then turn it on when rising to the surface. The shark would have smelt him and been watching him for some time and without the shark pod running was extremely intested in him. The diver was also found to be wearing the unit incorrectly. Its like a battery with two poles. He had one pole connected to his flipper and the other to the top of his regulator. When he surfaced his head and regulator was out of the water, hence the unit could not work properly. The guy was hit by the shark which took his right leg off while he was calling to his mate in the dingy. His buddy haulled him into the boat but he died of blood loss a few minutes later. In short, the coronor found that he was not using the shark pod correctly.

The shark shield is the updated version of the shark pod. There's quite a few testimonials from Western Australian and South Australian divers and fishermen on the shark shield web site. I decided to buy one. I tried it out today and I'll write a review on it this evening.

Graeme

Man fights off five-metre shark
An Australian man has managed to fight off a five-metre-long (16ft) shark, thought to be a great white, with his bare hands.
Josh Berris, 26, was surfing with friends off a beach on Kangaroo Island in South Australia on Saturday when he was attacked by the shark.

Mr Berris pushed the shark away with his hands before friends dragged him into the safety of rocks.

The surfer was taken to hospital where he received treatment for cut legs.

'Hit from underneath'

Emergency services praised the quick thinking of Mr Berris' friends in preventing what they said could have been a fatal attack.

"He was just sitting on the board waiting for the next wave... and it just hit him from underneath and knocked him off, then actually just took his board and was dragging him and he had to pull his leg rope off to actually get away from it," paramedic Dean George told local radio.

"It came back again so he pushed it away with his hand," Mr George said.

The attack was the second in two days in Australia. On Friday a 44-year-old man in Western Australia survived repeated attacks by a small shark off a Perth beach.

Great whites have been blamed for a string of attacks on surfers in Australian waters. Some scientist believe they confuse surfers for their natural prey, seals.


Story from BBC NEWS:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4280810.stm

Published: 2005/09/26 00:25:47 GMT

? BBC MMV

That article neglects to mention he was surfing like50m from a seal colony of 30-40 seals. The place they were surfing at was a known feeding ground for great whites. wat an idiot.

Too many attacks for my liking, i rekon time to start the culling, vigilante style

lets start a petition.

"I {Name Here} agree that dangerous shark species should be destroyed apon sighting."

Sign me up [}:)]

Hey did anyone hear the story on monday late night news about the shark caught at a Central Coast swimming lake. I think it was a small Great White. I saw the quick add but missed the story. Dammit

suffer in your jocks!

well good ol slave, i hope you you are a fisherman true.
what rig should i use off my gold coast jetty to land the fish of my dreams. bait , fly, whole chook?

Yes Uber,
The Daily Telegraph had a story on the Great White pulled out of the Tuggerah Lake, with pictures. It had been caught in commercial fishing net 500 meters off Canton beach. Yes it is amazing especially considering how shallow it is there and how often people kite and kids swim there.
The shark was only a young one but was still over 2 meters long and had a full set of chompers. This is the first shark story in my 3 years of kiting that has me spooked on what could have happened to someone as that shark was almost to the size where it would have been almost impossible for it to navigate back out. Think of that, a large great white stuck in the lake getting hungrier and hungrier. The officials say it would have had to "thread the needle" of the entrance to get in so not much chance of this happening again, but still. Scarry.

Hey I got the the Sydney Tele today but no Central coast story!!!
Bummer was it in Mondays tele?[}:)] Im so missin out. I wanted to see the pics of it! Oh well..if anyone has a link with pics pls post it

You guys are sooo funny. FYI
'experts' say, that your chances of getting bitten by a shark are no better than those of winning the lottery.
Humans are not a shark's preferred food choice. Most shark bites are sort of an exploratory action by the shark - it may bite, but it usually doesn't bite down completely the way it does with its other prey.
A greater percentage of beachgoers are injured by stingrays or hardhead and gafftop catfishes, which can have poisonous spines. They are more likely to cause harm than a shark.
When you consider all of the people in the world who are in the water at any given moment, the number of shark attacks is very rare.
Shark attacks are like airplane crashes. The majority of airplane trips are safe, but when a crash occurs, it gets big headlines.

To put it another way, statistics show that more people die each year - on average 90 to 100 -- from an allergic reaction to peanuts, so next time your about to chomp into a Mars bar keep that in mind..... it could be your last.

do you want to be cremated or buried.

re: UMINA BOY WROTE:
a 2m great white baby was caught 500m of Canton beach a popular Kiteboarding spot especially for body draggers!. The mother is still in the lake somewhere probly!! hey uber you go to canton dont u????? maybe your paranoia isnt sucha bad thing dude.

Reply:

Hey Umina Boy,

Yes I wish you posted here. Im trying to see how many pages i can get on this topic Anyway I did hear about it and they had a short news thing on it with photos of the baby chomper. However I missed the the news and didnt get to see the pics...very upset

Hey dont worry about me, your the local, if they found that puppy in Canton the mumma has to be swimming around somewhere. Im sure she's real upset that her small one has been captured and shes definately after revenge.

How appropriate that this happens just as the season starts.[}:)] Im going to invest in sharkee electro zappers suit and strap on thingy .Im inventing a shark prodder with 400zillion volts of zapping goodness. Only problem is the 9v battery isnt strong enuff. bahh design flaws!

Let me know if you hear anything else....till then you can keep Canton...Im staying in the Sydney bay waters-No freekin chompies here thank gawd.

yet i think they've worked out we taste good.

take out the shotty and get some target practice

hey dudes an interesting article has errupted recently in the newcastle herald, it was about a couple of whack jobs fishing for shar kees off stockton beach. They rig up a half a salmon on a gath sized hook and dude guy paddles out beyond the break and drops the bait then heads back to shore, their P.B time is 2 minutes, i'm wondering how long it takes to paddle in? :S while the dude is paddlin in they have a chair set up in the back of an old ute that they strap into and wait for a hook up. So far they have caught 22 sharks including 7 great whites, the biggest 2.7m and over 200kg.
What happened to fishing being lame? i personally think it is way more hardcore then kiting now!! And on that note Uber should stop being such a p u s s y.
I think im gonna start extreme kite trawling. that is, im gonna rig up 30 ft of 200 pound line and tie it to my leg then kite around with a dirty big tailor on a set of gang hooks[}:)]..lol
X x matty

i have been floating around the ocean a bit lately, hoping that my golden yellow kite is scaring the big fish away - i hear they don't like yellow ??