subasurf said...

Another thing...why the **** was he diving alone? Before anyone jumps down my throat, I'm not suggesting that a dive buddy could have prevented this.

But really...solo diving...not even once.

Neither and never will dive solo. Know plenty of people that do but. Not for me. I've had to use my buddies spare reg 27m under water. If he wasn't there I reckon I would have been cactus or got the bends belting up to the surface.

We've probably all seen this but is this photo real or just shadows?

Nothing about that photo says it's a shark. Could be a dolphin...could be a shark.
Either way, great pic!

Zuke said...

Thanks Woodo, I knew it was Rotto but wasn't sure about it being "real".

Suba, you're right. From the photo you can't be 100% sure, but if people were there and got a good look!

Apparantly it was a horse of a thing.

I normally just lurk on this forum.
Sad news indeed.
I told my wife who encourages me to go surfing so I don't get too fat that today was a bad day. I guess I will listen to that inner voice more often.

I have been in the water bleeding before and not gotten out. A fin slice. I'm not sure I would do that any more.

There must be a way to tag these fish long term and have warning bouys that can set off alarms on the beaches say at 1km distance. If we can track a satellite then surely we can track a shark.

Yeah I saw your post as I posted my own. There must be some merit to the idea!

Was really sketchy over there for a while when that "Pygmy"(80tonne!!) Blue washed up at the end of the left at Strickos in '05. It was chopped up and trucked out to Narrowneck for burial. Apparently they intend to dig it back up down the track and use the skeleton for display.

Now call me paranoid but it seems pretty silly to me to be burying a mass of rotting shark fodder at the narrowest part of an island built of porous limestone, every tide and shower will be leaching whale juice into the water for a very long time.

Was very unnerving surfing in a film of whale oil, actually spent a lot more time fishing for a while there

Ericson said...
would it be hard (I can't imagine it would be) to have receivers of some sort set up on popular beaches (and notorious beaches - read Cottesloe, Cowaramup Bay) that, whenever they detected one of those tags within say 1km of the beach, sounded an alarm that let everyone at the beach know that there was a whitey nearby (and kept sounding until it left)?

They do have acoustic receivers along many of our beaches. There's quite a few around the metro area. Problem is, it only works with acoustically tagged sharks and isn't currently coupled with any type of warning system. Go down to Cott and you can see the receivers out in the water. Go to North Freo/Sandtrax and you can see the receivers sticking out of the dunes.

The issue is the lack of tags in the field. Acoustic tags are cheap but obviously only work with a receiver nearby. GPS tagging is the way to go, but tags are more expensive and far more difficult to deploy (must be bolted onto the dorsal fin unlike acoustic tags which are 'speared' onto the body) and they only send a signal when the shark is on the surface for enough time for the switch to be triggered and the data sent. The pros of this is you need no other infrastructure in the water because they can be tracked from anywhere in the world.

Oh...and let's assume for a moment ALL dangerous sharks that come through Perth WERE acoustically tagged. If you were to link the acoustic receivers to an alarm system let me tell you now...the alarms would probably NEVER cease to be going off.

steve1972 said...

Maybe we need to have a more active tagging program? Fund the Uni's to do it.
Maybe us surfers need to start a charity to fund it, dunno.

We do definitely need to increase the amount of sharks we're tagging. Not just from a safety point of view, but knowing the movement of sharks is a great way to determine the health and mechanics of the ocean environment. I'm going to have a chat with my lecturers next week and see if they've got any ideas on increasing the tagging effort.

Hey Suba,

Do you think the weather like today sets off a hunting instinct trigger in the GWS?
That is my suspiscion. As the likehood of a successful hunt increases with the light conditions?

Anyway it would be great if you get somewhere with your lecturers. It would be a good post-grad program for sure.

At the end of the day, a shark will attack their prey when they're hungry and when the opportunity presents itself. With Great Whites, their primary diet isn't seals. It's tuna, snapper, smaller sharks/rays etc. When it's hunting other fish the weather conditions play very little role in how successful it is.

The main reason attacks on humans seam to occur during overcast conditions is because of the theory of mistaken identity. Whites use their sense of smell, the lateral line and the electric dipoles on their snout to track their prey...but it is almost entirely their eye sight that leads them in on the final (not entirely their eye sight as they roll their eyes back before the attack) approach. When you've got cloudy conditions and less light their vision is diminished. This makes it harder for them to distinguish between a seal (their primary surface prey) and a human...especially a human with flippers (aka, spongers).

There's also the theory that sharks will bite their prey once and wait for it to bleed out before they finish it off. It's an unproven theory but it does have merit. People compare this with the attacks on humans (usually one bite and that's it) and say that the shark does intend to kill the human and is simply waiting for us to bleed out. Could be true but there is evidence for and against this theory. I am undecided as to how I sit on the fence with this one

WestAussie said...

If you enter the water in or near the Attack Zone you have a significantly increased risk of being attacked by a shark.

That's a bit sensationalist. You're not taking into account all the variables...for starters, there are more people in the water in your "shark attack zone" which statistically probably more than offsets the apparent increased risk of you being the 'one'.

Actually the vast majority of beachgoers frequent the northern beaches and yet there have been no attacks there.

The frequency of attacks that just so happen to occur within the same marine environment provides strong evidence to suggest that attacks will continue to occur in the area pointed out.

I'm not saying attacks won't occur outside of that area... It's just uncanny how many attacks keep occurring there.

subasurf said...

WestAussie said...

If you enter the water in or near the Attack Zone you have a significantly increased risk of being attacked by a shark.

That's a bit sensationalist. You're not taking into account all the variables...for starters, there are more people in the water in your "shark attack zone" which statistically probably more than offsets the apparent increased risk of you being the 'one'.

Guys,
Just to add to the discussion as it seems there is another side that’s been left out, I feel that a big issue is not necessarily what can be done and what the most effective way is to help prevent shark attacks (i.e. shark nets, culling, tagging, “shark shield” permanently fixed around popular breaks?) but whether from the authorities’ point of view of time, effort and most importantly COST, doing something would be worthwhile.

Despite the tragic events over the past weeks, shark attacks are still a very rare occurrence and it’s as simple as that. Unfortunately, only few listened to Thoreau and we ended up in a world driven by cost/benefit logic. Surely if more funds and effort are put in, a solution can be found, but I just can’t see it happening as there just isn’t a business case for it.

If someone showed me a shark shield that actually works I’d buy it in an instant, so would many others, but even then we would still be only a small market to justify any initial significant investment. Put $10-20m now to develop the shark shield technology further and I don’t think a working solution would be far away, but no bank is going to fund this given the risk (they would instead prefer to stick a logo on the helicopter in order to give out more loans, pay huge bonuses to their executives and then claim people’s homes back if they default....they just don’t give a ****).

Same goes for any serious action that the government can, but probably won’t take. Yes, they may respond to public calls for an immediate action now, but long term unlikely.

Either we all put in a few $$ or manage to convince the government to put in a few $$, can’t see any other solution than to accept the risk.....

RIP diver

There it is. I wonder what the chances of Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane all being located in 'attack zones'. Huge conspiracy

Dawn Patrol said...

WestAussie said...

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Yet another shark attack in Perth's shark 'Attack Zone'.

Gotta say, I'm not too sure I agree with that zone thing.
I could do a similar thing with car accidents. Highlight all the main roads and we have an attack zone.
There is a decent map of all the attacks i think in the kite forum. It clearly shows that more attacks occur in populated areas.

Works for me as i surf outside the zone so i'm fine..