Posted on 02/18/2011 3:49:24 PM PST by Capt. Tom
Colleagues of an abalone diver who was taken by two great white sharks off South Australia's Eyre Peninsula yesterday say they are shocked by the attack.
Aircraft and boats with police and fisheries staff on board searched for the body of diver Peter Clarkson, who was stalked and attacked as he surfaced from a dive near Coffin Bay at the peninsula's southern tip.
But wild weather forced them to call off the search.
The skipper of the abalone boat witnessed the attack and police said he was still suffering from "significant shock".
Mr Clarkson, 49, grew up in Adelaide and had also lived at Esperance in Western Australia.
(Excerpt) Read more at abc.net.au ...
Sharks on a diet and decided to share an entree?
Maybe it didn’t quite. Sharks aren’t normally coöperative hunters...
The Great Australian Bight is one of the few places in the world where great white sharks are regularly encountered.
I don't understand how these divers could be "shocked."
Sharks doing what sharks do.
When one voluntarily decides to enter an environment where one occupies a lower position on the food chain,one can reasonably expect the possibility of becoming food
Almost like being shocked that a western female was gang-raped in Cairo.
And they’re searching for what? Shark turds?
"I've been predicting this is going to get worse and worse for quite some time because since they actually turned around and protected the sharks and secondly on top of that ... [there are] not very many shark fishermen around any more," he said."Back in the 60s, 70s and 80s ... we used to catch the odd pointer you know at least once a month and keep our beaches pretty safe.
"But since they have been protected I reckon there would be, or there is, a lot more sharks around."
I think there should be a perennial open season on sharks within a certain number of miles of a coastal area inhabited by humans. Just as we wouldn't tolerate grizzlies or lions living among humans, we shouldn't tolerate sharks either.
Another person was killed besides the swimmer and diver and there was this in the Australian newspapers about the third death.
An inquest heard yesterday the Shark Shield surf model was activated on a float carrying bait when the 3.6m female shark approached. Rather than being deterred by the device, the shark, under the gaze of the Natal Sharks Board, bit into it.
South Australian Deputy State Coroner Tony Schapel yesterday heard of the test failure during the inquest into the death of Jarrod Stehbens, who was taken by a great white shark while diving off Glenelg in South Australia in 2005.
I guess more work will have to be done on this device.
Back to the drawing boards.- tom
What we have here is an eating machine.
So these devices are turning out to be more like “dinner bells”!
Cat to electric can opener syndrome? A dinner bell of sorts?
I was a kid during WWII and remember one of the pilots say that they had a special dye they used when they ditched. It was a brilliant orange that was supposed to make them easier to spot as well as repel sharks. It didn’t seem to work for the latter. The pilots ended up calling the the color “yum-yum yellow”.
We had one of the first shark attractors made. The claims were it could bring sharks in from hundreds of yards away. What I noticed was that was not true, and that the sharks that came to the boat by us chumming them in had to be withing a few feet of the device to show any interest in the electrical device.
People make claims about products to sell them, and those products should be tested in the real world like the device that got bit in that study.I doubt before the Inquiry that info on the device failure was common knowledge.
This is a life or death matter, and not whether one product cleans better than another. - Tom.
That was copper acetate, and they found out in later studies it was just a morale booster, it didn't work as claimed.
We might be at that stage with today's alleged electrical shark repelling devices. - Tom
No remains found from shark victim
A search has ended near Coffin Bay in South Australia for remains of shark attack victim, Peter Clarkson. His skipper Howard Rodd saw the abalone diver taken by two sharks last Thursday as he was surfacing near Perforated Island.
Police are investigating if Mr Clarkson was wearing a shark shield safety device at the time of the attack. It emits an electrical wave to deter sharks.
The victim's friend Don Morrison has no doubt.
"I guarantee he would have been wearing it. I think he checked it was working all the time. I'm pretty sure he would have been wearing it," he said.
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