Shark expert cautions swimmers after fatal Freo attack
SHARK expert Hugh Edwards today cautioned the public to stay alert over the next few weeks following the fatal attack on Saturday of a 57-year-old man off Port Beach in North Fremantle.
“We need to be careful where we put our toes in the water,” Edwards warned.
“It’s that one shark that is going to be the danger.”
Close friends of Paul Millachip, 57, told StreetWise the family was in shock, his wife at the beach when the attack occurred about 10am. Witnessed by other swimmers who tried to help, the shark attacked about 30m from shore. Only a pair of goggles has been found.
“The best thing that could have been done is to immediately get out and catch it,” he told StreetWise. “One of the problems is great whites can move 100 miles in a day. They don’t usually stay around whereas tiger sharks do.”
The 88-year-old author and diver who co-discovered the 1629 Batavia and 1727 Zeewijk wrecks said the shark, believed to be a great white up to 4.5m long, is possibly an old female rogue or repeat ‘killer’ responsible for multiple deaths in WA, particularly in coastal waters near Perth.
Edwards said the only time a shark has been captured and killed in WA was in 1925 when a 4m tiger shark killed bookmaker’s clerk Simeon (Samuel) Ettelson, 55, at North Cottesloe near the same spot where a 4m great white mauled to death businessman Ken Crew, 49, in 2000. Both were attacked about 30m from shore.
Lifesavers in the 1925 attack attempted to rescue the injured man and lift him into their 10-foot dinghy, but the shark bit Ettelson’s leg again as it rammed the rescuers’ boat, almost capsizing it.
Dr Harpur, of Fremantle Hospital, was on the beach but could do little to save Ettelson, the shark spotted off the beach for several hours afterwards. Determined to catch it, people hunted it with rifles and dynamite charges until a tiger shark was snared by mutton baits.
It was exhibited as a ‘Man-Eating Shark’.
The skull of the 1925 ‘monster’ sits lifeless on Edwards’ lounge room table. How he acquired it is another story reported previously by StreetWise.
Rogue ‘killer’
Since 2000, 19 people have been killed in shark attacks off WA, nine in metropolitan waters near Perth including the latest fatality Edwards said took place about the same distance from shore as the attacks on Ettelson and Crew.
Edwards’ belief in a rogue shark stems from a series or ‘cluster’ of shark attacks in WA in 2011 and 2012 when five people were killed at different locations between Dunsborough and Lancelin over a period of about 10 months.
“I believe one shark is responsible for more than one attack,” he said. “Based on attacks in WA and South Australia, you get two or three lots of attacks either over a short time or in successive years, then none for 10 years or so.”
(In June 2011, a great white at Mullaloo Beach is believed to have taken a chunk out of the surf ski now hanging at Cicerello’s. Next to it is former St Kilda footballer Brian Sierakowski and friend Barney Hanrahan’s double surf ski which in 1997 was attacked by a 5m white pointer at Cottesloe).
Edwards said the shark or sharks responsible for the five deaths in 2011 and 2012 were never caught. He said it is not impossible for one shark to frequent metropolitan waters, particularly if it is old and finding it difficult to hunt natural prey.
As reported by StreetWise after the October 9, 2020 death of surfer Andrew Sharpe, 40, near Esperance (https://bit.ly/3bPtufq), Edwards’ rogue shark theory holds some water though Fisheries researchers have said there is no evidence for an individual shark involved in multiple attacks.
He told StreetWise: “Some of the victims were bitten in half. Others were swallowed whole. This is a big shark moving between Bunker Bay and Busselton to Rottnest, Cottesloe and nearly 200km north to Wedge Island near Lancelin.”
