Shark Attack

The Last Bite Of Summer

One of the things we do track on this blog is shark attacks. Why? I don't know, but I started tracking them as they emerged in the media a few years ago and now I can't quite let it go. Call it the Jaws-homage-Factor. Usually these attacks seem to happen more in spring than in Autumn, but here we have a late one

The latest attack took a 16 year old boy near Ballina.

A 16-year-old boy killed off the NSW North Coast was probably the victim of a bull shark, an expert says.

The boy, from Wollongbar, west of Ballina, died after being bitten on the legs while bodyboarding with his friend at Ballina's popular Lighthouse Beach about 8am today.

Manager of life sciences at Sydney's Taronga Zoo, John West, said today recent rain on the NSW North Coast would have resulted in an increase in shark numbers in the area.

"The nutrients that come down with the water and out from the rivers stimulate an increase in the available food for fishes, and then you get schools of fish forming, and then you get predators that prey on those," Mr West said.

Today's attack occurred near the North Wall - a breakwater at the entrance to the Richmond River.

Mr West, who is also the curator of the Australian Shark Attack File, said large schools of fish were likely to congregate at the river mouth.

"That's a typical spot where you'll get congregations of fish, and therefore other sharks," he said.

The attack was likely to have been by a bull shark, Mr West said.

"If there's a lot of fresh water around, and it probably sounds as if there was, the animal's more likely to be a bull shark, because bull sharks are able to move up into fresh water, whereas the white pointers and tigers and other whalers don't."

Bull shark it is, then.
I got to see the oldest Bull Shark n captivity in Okinawa's Churaumi Aquarium a couple of years ago. It's plenty scary enough an you certainly wouldn't want to fall into that fish tank, even if the bull shark was fed recently.