I believe this one was fatal too, Rottnest this time.

Yeah I went down the beach this morning and thought the same thing BD, It was a real weird looking ocean wasn't it.

^^^don't start another shark culling discussion, there are more of them than arguments about strapped v unstrapped.

sorry to hear about the fatality, condolences to family

tightlines said...

Yeah I went down the beach this morning and thought the same thing BD, It was a real weird looking ocean wasn't it.

Wow we can now predict shark attacks.
Cmon that is bull****.

2 recent prior shark attacks, lots of talk about it, people are on edge.

murky water = attack ?? really.

rscaife said...

Great White sharks are not an endangered species and they should not be protected. They have become a clear and indiscriminate threat to humans across the globe and they need to be culled, if not outright hunted to extinction. As apex predators, they lie at the very end of the foodchain, and their elimination would be largely inconsequential from an ecological perspective.

did you learn that at school? did you even go to school? thats the best laugh I've had all day!

There is no doubt that fatal white attacks are getting much more common. THe average used to be about 1 every 18 months - 2yrs in W.A .

Thats 3 in a very small space of time. I know Abalone divers who used to have the odd encounter on isolated occasions . Now seeing a white is very common for these blokes.

Numbers of sharks on the rise + number of peeps in the water = more shark attacks.

I just hope the one that gets me is really big and does it in one go. I dont want to be like the black knight in the HOLy grail and go one limb at a time.....

Anyway gotta go and service the outboard on the dinghy to get reagy for ROck lobster season. Hope the sharkies are all gone south by then........

Bento said...


Wow we can now predict shark attacks.
Cmon that is bull****.

2 recent prior shark attacks, lots of talk about it, people are on edge.

murky water = attack ?? really.

Sorry mate, but I did own and operate a charter fishing boat out of Shark Bay, Monkey Mia for several years, so I am semi qualified on this topic of conditions and big sharks.

You should note I never "predicted" that there would be a shark attack, merely mentioned it in passing as ALL the conditions made it look that way. It takes more than just murky water or just wind or just cloud cover or lack of, to make conditions seem right to give a higher probability of a shark attack.

Condolences to the family. But today I thought all day........what a sharkie day and I'm 20 min. from the beach.

You just know something is up.......dark, warm, no visibility, still........just that happy time for the stealth hunter.

Biologists typically study single species, populations, genus or families, whilst ecologists study relationships between species within an ecosystem. I know plenty of highly skilled biologists who are nonetheless incapable of thinking systemically. I'm not saying you're one of them but you're sure acting that way.

Do you seriously believe that removing an apex predator will have no major effects? What do sharks eat? What species numbers are regulated by sharks? What happens if their numbers explode? What do the things that sharks eat eat? ... and so on

From other angles - What eats dead sharks? What diseases are regulated by the activities of sharks? What migratory patterns are to some extent not just followed but also driven by sharks? What microbes and parasites are carried by sharks and what is their role in ocean systems?

For each such question (to which we have incomplete answers) there will be many more that we can't even pose because our knowledge of ecology is always imperfect. We mess with it at our peril.

For a good read I recommend "The Diversity of Life" by E.O. Wilson. He's a great writer, scholar, biologist, and philosopher of science and this is one of his major works. www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=30855&content=book

Really at the end of the day, shark or not will it stop you doing the thing you love most

If so you shouldnt be on the water

Another day, another death, and a seabreeze thread.

Have to say i've been swayed to the idea of a cull. Having previously been very much against it. Reading perthnow article, looks like public opinion is turning this way as well, and the government is going to allow commercial fishing to increase for great whites.

pitchforks and torches at the ready.

condolances to the family . makes you wonder, pointers are a long lived fish and travel widely . locally we have 4(i think) shark dive licensed charters who travel south of port lincoln to the neptunes and chum and deliberately stir sharks for a profit on a daily basis.
the companies make heaps of cash but do the fish once they leave , associate boats and familiarity with divers in the water with lunch?
one fatal attack on an experienced ab diver last year by reportedly 2 pointers while he was wearing shark sheild. october is always sus ,does make you think.

About the Cottesloe fatal encounter:

"Mr Martin, from Mosman Park in Perth's west, was CEO of the James Point consortium, a building company planning a private port near Kwinana in Perth's south."

"more chance of dying by a bee sting"

not if you're a perth ocean regular.

no comment............................................................................................ theyre looking to destroy the shark and doing a cull ....2 late they missed the boat

some reading for RSCAIFE, a paper published in SCIENCE in July this year talking about ecological consequences of the removal of apex predators.

here's a press release about this paper:

news.ucsc.edu/2011/07/apex-consumers.html

here's the link to the paper:

www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6040/301.abstract?sid=da4fa756-9c82-4929-843b-3f063829b22c