Shark attack

[ross]

hunting down "man eating" sharks?
just another example of man altering the environment to suit himself i reckon .i got a couple of comments for thought;
how the hell would they know if they got the right shark?
maybe they could drop a huge fish tank into the water and drag big whitey up on deck with an onboard crane and use some sort of xray device to look for remains and just throw him back if he's the wrong one. hope he didnt get a good look at your face !
whites are a pelagic species.nomadic by nature you might say.the chance of locating the right shark are pretty small.does that matter?(i hope so)

i guess some humans cant handle that they're some where below the top of the food chain.
interesting that none of the families involved in this years fatal shark attacks was keen on a search and destroy.
but you can always rely on the media to rally a lynch mob.

[ScottMac]

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[waka]

ross
yeh western australia has been coping a flogging in the media about the man eating whites.
and it is true you can never really know which shark is the culpret.
but while we jump into their enviroment, there is always the chance of being a nibblely!
my brother has lived up at Exmouth for the last 30+ years, is agun fisho and diver, and the sharks hasnt really worried him, till the last couple of years.
there has been a really BIG white up there for sometime now, and it has been giving the prawning fleet up there a bit of trouble.
it has been nawing boats, basiclly following the food chain around.
he is blaming the whales for the influx of great whites.
since whaleing has ceased in WA , the whales have come back ten fold,and with them comes the whites.
but the food chain is huge , there is so much fish there , that it is the luck of the draw if you get taken.
hopefully i am one of the lucky ones-we are moving to WA as soon as my house here at Dunmore sells!
dont call me sharkbait!
waka

[ross]

waka
congrats on the decsision to move west.
this shark thing is getting out of hand over there eh?
i just dont know if culling them is the way forward,they are magnificent creatures thats for sure.
it is easy for the likes of me to sit back on the east coast(not known for large numbers of maruading whites)and pass comment on the subject.your brothers opinions are more valid than mine,no question there.
last year i was surfing in margaret river in the weeks following brad smiths attack at lefthanders.
there were signs posted in the car park at lefts warning that a sick whale had beached itself right in front of lefthanders and that it was not advisable to surf there for obvious reasons.
seeing the waves were pumping we chose to surf anyway.you can imagine how i felt when after noticing the odd bit of blubber floating about and the pungent whale guts smell in the water,that i was fairly alarmed when a sea lion as big as a car erupted from the water about three metres away .
i felt like going in after that.gradually over the ensuing weeks the crowds returned to the area.(we got to surf lefties on 5 occasions with just us out )
i know that margarets locals have been pointing their collective fingers at the cray fisherman.claiming that their baits are attracting predators
but your brothers thoughts on the whaling issue are interesting.recent news is that the japanese are looking to re-establish their pesky whale culling operations.
do things thrive and over populate cause we create ideal environs when we tamper with the foodchain?

[ScottMac]

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[quadfin]

Recently Gene Gore and his wife Rachel completed a 500 mile charity paddle of the Texas Coastline. On the second day of the paddle they were hit by a Mako right outside the Surfline off Padre Island. They patched the board and continued and completed the paddle.

Picture of repaired ding on paddleboard..

[K-man]

mornin all,

Last census shows about 4,ooo harbor seals[20% of pop.]up this way.
E-seals are expanding to new but less productive breeding areas.We had a 4yr old bull hanging around our favorite reef.We've been chased out several times.Only happens around the breeding season-Could anything be more fun than being chased around by an agreesive-amorus 1200lb
mammal?
The problem here is [aside from this fun stuff ]once they establish a beach head the feds will generally close the area to all traffic,which includes surfing,for that amount of time the animals are present.
The sharks......''se la vie''


cheers

PS- horn,the iris,lupine,paint brush are going.with this late rain,should be an extended spring bloom.

[Birdie]

As long as the GW's are well fed on their natural diet, and have good water visibility....the chances are extremely that they will pass you by....

Best advice is to stay out of murky low viz water...don't wear anything shiny like metal watches (Bethany Hamilton thinks it was her Rip Curl watch that cost her - her arm, and that seems the best bet - shiny silver things look like FISH) - and don't get in when dead whales, lots of seals/sea lions are around...

And river mouths and creeks and bay entrances are always attractive as fish and pinnipeds go in and out - so - they are like moving buffets.

Thats about it.

[TIMO]

As a point of interest, a lot of large sharks (Tigers/Whites) have slowly changed their main diet in the last 10-15 years.
Stomach contents have revealed that whites and tigers are now eating things like rock cods, eels, and crabs, scavenging along the coast line (Aust East coast)
The thinking behind this is that with such a large and growing fleet of long line fishermen , working off the continental shelf , they are targeting the staple diet (tuna , broad bill ect) of these sharks.
The reaction to this could be an increased amount of time a large shark will spend hugging the coast compared to what it would have spent 20 years ago.
Perhaps they are starving.
Last year a large seal was sitting out on the end of snapper rock (Evans head) with a massive bite taken out of it.
People were trying to catch it and there was noway in the world that seal was going to jump back in the water at one stage it fell in and go out just as quick.
There are a lot of issues to be taken into account about large sharks on the coast, management of our resources should be the first!

[Bryan Jackson]

You think a surfer in the lineup getting getting hit by a shark every now and then is bad, did you catch that made for TV movie last week, "Spring Break Shark Attack"? Now that was scary!

I always thought that shiny bright metal objects only attracted two types of dim-witted, cold blooded predators: barracudas and Republican politicians!

[hart]

Perhaps they are starving.


Last year a large seal was sitting out on the end of snapper rock (Evans head) with a massive bite taken out of it.

People were trying to catch it and there was noway in the world that seal was going to jump back in the water at one stage it fell in and go out just as quick.


There are a lot of issues to be taken into account about large sharks on the coast, management of our resources should be the first!

TIMO

one of the most insightful posts I have read in a long while..

Good on you

we just gotta keep looking within, for the problems that are without

the answers here, are not only within our grasp..they are in the palms of our hands!

if we would only, look

hart

just as well surfers are among the few that notice..especially if they are fishermen...

on topic et all

Happy Easter

[quadfin]

"Perhaps they are starving."

Overfishing is a possibility but also overpopulation could also be a cause with protective legislations in place. Research and education is the key.

"stay out of murky water"

I come from the land of chocolate brown water in Texas and most of the shark attacks are probably related to misindentification on dimwitted sharks part. I now live in the land of clear water and shark attacks are unheard of. Both areas have large shark populations.

[quadfin]

This post borders on a short story but is my favorite shark story.

I started out my working career on mobile offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig in this story was a jackup rig. 400' round legs were attached to a barge on the bottom and the rig (barge) itself would "jack" up the legs by giant hydraulic rams that would pin through holes in the leg. One set of rams would hold and the other rams would climb up the leg set..and release the bottom rams to climb again. In this story we had 150' of leg underwater.

Most of the crews on these rigs were country boys from Louisiana....Cajuns. Best guys in the world to work with and just wildmen in every sense of the word. "T" is a Cajun slang for the youngest boy in the family. This post is about T-Willys great shark adventure.

T-Willy had a great fear of sharks and we would almost constantly see sharks around our rig from our high vantage point on the rig. In the summer time the iron deck of the rig would be so hot that you could feel the heat through your workboots. The water would look inviting on these days but ocean currents and sharks would rule out swimming. But T-Willy decided the inside of the legs would make ideal swimming pools and be shark free. Not having much to do on our offtime other than fish and practical jokes..we did not mention to T-Willy the fact that we would climb through the openings in the leg and that a shark at least as big as us could easily swim in. We followed T-Willy down the leg with rescue rope in hand.

T-Willy jumped in the water and was immediatey sucked down 30' in a trail of bubbles by the surge thru 150' of holes in the leg. Our eyes got big as we thought about how we would explain our involvement in the demise of Willy. Then Willy began to reappear from the depths as he had been shot out of submarime missle tube and got about 3' of air on the return surge. Our worry turned to tears of laughter as we allowed him to repeat the show twice more before throwing the rope and lifering to him.

[TIMO]

Quadfin
Funny story mate wish you had some pics to go with it.
I work on remote mine sites and can relate, as you do have to much time up your sleave with nothing to do, and as they say:
boredom + entertainment = trouble, the key thing to this is to get as many people involved which narrows down the amount of people that can blow the whistle on you.