Posted on 07/12/2004 8:42:14 AM PDT by 50 Cal
A surfer was bitten in half after losing a desperate fight for his life with two Great White sharks.
Brad Smith, 29, was surfing off the Western Australian coast when a huge shark 'as wide as a car' lunged out of the water and snapped his board in half.
Mr Smith's friends could only watch in horror as he fell into the sea and another of the enormous creatures moved in on him. Experts said it was almost as if they had ambushed him.
The surfer lashed out with his fists to try to keep the sharks at bay as they came at him repeatedly. But after just 45 seconds he disappeared beneath the surface - and the water turned red.
When his body floated back up, his friends risked their own lives to go out and drag it back to shore.
Yesterday they were too upset to describe his injuries, but another surfer at Left Handers Beach near the resort of Gracetown said he had been warned: 'Don't go in there, someone's been bitten in half by a shark.'
Another surfer Cameron Rowe, 17, said: 'There was nothing we could do to help him. At first I saw one shark and thought it was one of the usual ones you see swimming-around, reef sharks, which don't cause you any trouble.
'But these things were massive. When the first one came up a bit I could see its fin and it was almost a yard high.
'When it came out of the water with Brad still fighting it, I could see its body was about the width of a car and its open jaws were as wide as a man's arm.
'What happened then just ended up in a terrible feeding frenzy. It was awful.'
One of Mr Smith's friends, Mitch Campbell, said: 'It was the worst thing I have seen. There was so much confusion out there it was impossible to tell which shark was attacking, but they kept coming at him time and time again.
'You could see Brad trying to whack at them to keep them away.
'We were shouting out, "Swim for your life, mate! Swim for your life!" But he obviously didn't have a chance. They were massive.
'He put up such a brave fight. He was punching away and there was water and blood everywhere.'
Police have collected Mr Smith's surfboard, snapped in half by the razor-sharp teeth of one of the sharks. Throughout yesterday-marksmen in a flotilla of boats, aided by police in a helicopter, searched for the killers, to no avail.
The failure to locate the maneaters has sent fear along the West Australian coast.
'If we find them, we have the authority to kill them,' said fisheries officer Tony Cappelluti. Great Whites are a protected species - unless one kills a human.
'If they've tasted human blood, then they'll remain a problem until we've tracked them down,' he added.
Shark expert Sasha Thompson, from the Aquarium of Western Australia, said witness reports suggested the sharks were Great Whites, the most feared of all marine creatures and the species featured in the film Jaws.
'Judging by the size, the area they were swimming in and the power of the jaws, I'd say they were Great Whites,' she said.
She said it was impossible to know what triggered the attack, but added: 'It is whale migration season and that might have something to do with it.'
Great Whites are known to spend time on Western Australia's southern coast in winter before moving north to hunt whales returning to southern waters.
Another marine expert, Mike Roennfeldt, said he was surprised at the nature of the ambush-style attack.
'Generally sharks are solo hunters,' he said. 'It's unusual - unheard of, in fact - for one Great White to knock a guy off his surfboard and then for another to attack, which seems to have happened here.'
It was the second fatal attack in West Australian waters in less than four years.
In November 2000, 49-year-old swimmer Ken Crew died from massive bleeding after one of his legs was bitten off in shallow water just north of Perth's popular Cottesloe Beach.
ouch...
Who edits this stuff?
Sounds like a Momma is teaching her baby how to survive.
Ridiculous. Human's aren't the natural diet for great whites. Most likely the sharkes were feeding and the surfer interupted them.
I'm no enviro nut but, I don't think they should kill the sharks. Everyone knows those waters are infested with all kinds of sharks. I used to surf all of the time in Northern California (Spanish Bay--Montery). I was well aware of the risks and would want no harm done to a shark if I was bit. When the first guy was killed out there I stopped surfing there for awhile. I was pretty scared. The water is so clear that when you are on your board and the foam clears you can see all these large objects moving underneath yu. They were seals. But it scared the crap out of you every time. Finally moved. Probably for the best.
Theres two kinds of surfers...the halves and the half nots.
'If they've tasted human blood, then they'll remain a problem until we've tracked them down,' he added.
Ridiculous. Human's aren't the natural diet for great whites. Most likely the sharkes were feeding and the surfer interupted them.
Most humans don't have the fat content of a seal or other marine mammals. On the other hand I don't think they'd spit out Michael Moore.
One half of me thinks your comment is half funny. The other half thinks your comment is in bad taste. Still, I can't help but be reminded of that great song by Eric Idle & John Cleese... Eric the Half a Bee...
Half a bee, philosophically,
Must, ipso facto, half not be.
But half the bee has got to be
Vis a vis, its entity. D'you see?
But can a bee be said to be
Or not to be an entire bee
When half the bee is not a bee
Due to some ancient injury?
La dee dee, one two three,
Eric the half a bee.
A B C D E F G,
Eric the half a bee.
Is this wretched demi-bee,
Half-asleep upon my knee,
Some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric the half a bee!
Fiddle de dum, Fiddle de dee,
Eric the half a bee.
Ho ho ho, tee hee hee,
Eric the half a bee.
I love this hive, employee-ee,
Bisected accidentally,
One summer afternoon by me,
I love him carnally.
He loves him carnally,
Semi-carnally.
There is a theory put forward on this subject that goes as follows. Humans are not the preferred forrf for GWS's, seals are. However if you ever look at a underwater picture of a surfer lying on a board you then have almost exactly the same visual profile as a seal so the shark attacks.
And jut to give the other side of the tale, an average 10 humans per year are killed by sharks. 300 million sharks are killed by humans each year.
What a horrible story. He put up a brave fight, the poor man. RIP
There's your problem. It's easy to be mistaken for one of the shark's favorite dishes. Stay away from seals.
Once an animal kills a human, regardless of the animal, it has to be put down... particularly if it eats the human as food. Once it learns humans are easy pickings, which we are biologically speaking it will continue to hunt them...
You don't play enviroweinie nonsense with a known mankiller.. you put them down.
Everything this reporter knows about sharks, he learned from Steven Spielberg.
How awful.
YIKES!!!
Everytime we hear of a shark attack, someone always seems to come to the shark's rescue in the discourse and says "Oh, it's so UNUSUAL!"
I wonder if the two Australian shark-lovers, Jim and Valerie Taylor, have any comment about this.
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