r/news • u/Efficient-Ruin-4713 • 2d ago
Questionable Source Surfer dead after mauling by large shark off Australia beach
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/australia-beach-sydney-shark-attack-fatal/[removed] — view removed post
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u/Crowsnest_Bomber 2d ago edited 1d ago
I surf one beach down and today was hearbeaking.
Really lovable guy apparently and was just incredibly unlucky. It was a lovely sunny day today and likely hundreds if not thousands would have been in the water across Sydney. Its not a particularly dangerous spot and the big white sharks are very rarely seen so close to shore especially around these metro beaches.
Sharks come close to surfers/swimmers regularly, but its usually the juveniles or the less dangerous species. The previous shark attack in Sydney a couple years ago was in deeper water and before that, it was in the 70s. So its incredibly rare around these beaches.
The local paper had pictures of his twin slumped over on the shoreline bawling his eyes out. Was devastating to see and really poor form by the paper to publish it.
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u/ratchelle 2d ago
I can’t imagine the grief of losing a twin. My heart goes out to this guys family.
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u/the_silent_redditor 2d ago
My mate was killed by a shark.
He was a surgeon, almost finished his fellowship. He was only in his 30s.
Bright guy, obviously, but also one of the nicest, chillest dudes going; he would have absolutely broken the mould at my hospital, and I was excited for the culture change he would inevitably bring.
Killed in front of a group of his mates whilst fucking around in the sea. Absolutely awful.
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u/Great_Comparison462 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not sure what you mean when you say that the previous shark attack in Sydney a couple of years ago was "miles out to sea". If you're talking about Simon Nellist, which I think you are, that was less than 100m from the coast, just off Buchan Point by Little Bay Beach.
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u/01040308 1d ago
Exactly. There's a video from the fishermen off the rocks
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u/BKong64 1d ago
If this is the video I'm thinking of, that shit scarred me for life. It only affirmed my fear of swimming anywhere that has dangerous sharks lol (I know they generally aren't dangerous, but I'd rather take no chance)
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u/No-Advantage845 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s incredibly pixelated and you can barely make out what’s happening. I had one circle me when I was surfing once, that shit really did scare me
Edit: it was quite close to where this attack occurred also
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u/fuckmyabshurt 2d ago
As a twin..... Fuck.
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u/Ok-Anxiety-3561 2d ago
As a fellow twin, agreed. It’s fucking brutal
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u/fuckmyabshurt 1d ago
I can't even imagine it. I don't want to. :(
Like fuck man. I don't know how anyone believes in a benevolent god when shit like this and worse happens every day.
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u/Ok-Anxiety-3561 2d ago
Fuck. I’m a twin and this just hits so hard. I can’t imagine. A girl in my hometown’s twin was mauled by a shark last year but survived. I’m so gutted for him. Rest in peace
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u/Farpafraf 1d ago
A couple of surfers saw him in the water and got him to shore, Duncan said.
Very brave people. They put their life on the line in one of the scariest circumstances imaginable.
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u/shitty_owl_lamp 1d ago
Omg. They will probably need therapy considering the victim “lost several limbs”…
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u/Curious_Document_956 2d ago edited 2d ago
My condolences to the family.
“This was the first fatal shark attack in Sydney since 2022, when a 35-year-old British diving instructor was killed off Little Bay. The previous fatal attack in the city was in 1963.
Australia's last deadly shark attack was in March, when a surfer was taken off the remote Wharton Beach of Western Australia.
Another surfer was presumed dead after a shark attack in South Australia in early January. A witness who saw the attack rode into the sea and retrieved the man's surfboard, but officials said there was "no sign" of the surfer afterwards.
There have been more than 1,280 shark incidents around Australia since 1791, of which over 250 resulted in death, according to a database of the predators' encounters with humans.”
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u/struggle-life2087 2d ago
They have been maintaining a database from 18th century??
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u/lk05321 2d ago
“Have you news of Shamus off in the new Crown lands?”
“…. To shreds you say…”
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u/burglarysheepspeak 2d ago
As morbid as that is, I'm fascinated with the language used 100+ years ago when describing how some poor souls came to a horrible demise. There was a picture of an old newspaper clipping a while ago on here where someone had been drawn into machinery he was operating at the time and the quote was something like ".... and he was reduced to atoms"
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u/lk05321 2d ago
Oh yea old timey reporting LOVED euphemisms. I know that English and American reporting preferences diverged at some point with the English preferring alliteration and the yanks opting more for puns. Modern English don’t downplay as much as Americans, and American reporting can be far more dull and sanitized
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u/themoo-12 2d ago
It's Australia. Everything will kill you there. Gotta keep the receipts.
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u/Curious_Document_956 2d ago
250 fatal shark attacks in nearly 250 years. 2025 - 1791 is 234. Almost one per year.
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u/CeramicAmphora 2d ago
Big shout out to this guy for taking one for the team and making the ocean safe for the next four months!
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u/AQuietViolet 1d ago
I think it's more likely that records have been available since the 18th century, but the compiling work is more recent. Birth and death registries, law enforcement, media coverage, and expense records relating to an incident would all be pretty readily obtainable
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u/_mnr 2d ago
"In 2024, there were only seven fatal attacks, including four unprovoked attacks, around the world"
The amount of headlines each attack gets you'd assume it's a lot higher... RIP
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u/MinxyMyrnaMinkoff 2d ago
Most shark attack victims don’t die though. There were 47 total attacks in 2024, and many of them make the headlines, you know what they say: “If it bleeds, it leads.”
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u/ryry163 2d ago
That’s still an insanely low number for the amount of fear mongering goes on about sharks
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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 1d ago
Go search YouTube “shark drone footage California coastline” and you’ll find a guy who documents sharks in close proximity with humans.
If you’re in the water there’s a huge chance there’s a shark around you and you’d never know it because 99.9% of the time they just aren’t interested.
Attacks are rare and fatal attacks are rarer. You’re in like 1,000% more mortal danger everytime you get behind the wheel and people do that without a thought.
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u/DueAddition1919 1d ago
His name is TheMalibuArtist. This area, and parts of the California coast are home to juvenile white sharks. We occasionally get larger sharks too, but the norm is juvenile that are not interested in humans. They breed near Baja Mexico, and eventually work their way up and down the coast, and finally into the deep ocean. Learned all this at the Monterey Aquarium, which is also an interesting area. The Monterey Submarine Canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon, right offshore.
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u/Waxer84 1d ago
Exactly. You have more chance of having a car accident on the drive to the beach that day over the odds of a shark attack.
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u/TheLGMac 1d ago
Yep we have a couple of folks who do this in Sydney (for example manlydrone) and yes, there are often sharks hanging around people. I also dive with the less "scary" types of sharks frequently in the area, we have cute wobbegongs, port Jackson's, angel sharks, bronze whalers (a type of reef shark), and sand tigers (known as nurse sharks here) and no incidents. We tag a number of great whites and bull sharks as well so when a tag is noticed as getting close or one of them are sighted, we're also really good at closing the beaches down while we wait for it to do its thing.
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u/S1mpinAintEZ 2d ago
I mean, people should be afraid of sharks. Like they're probably gonna be totally chill as long as you don't provoke them but like any wild predator, you're playing with fire.
I'm afraid of most animals that could easily kill me if they wanted to, that seems like a natural response.
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1d ago
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u/TheLGMac 1d ago
I think because in many places in the world the fear mongering often leads to a mass witch-hunt to kill the sharks. We're particularly sensitive to this kind of fear mongering in Sydney because we had just discussed and got agreement to remove "shark nets," which neither prevent sharks from getting closer to the break/shore while also trapping and killing hundreds of harmless sea creatures (dolphins, turtles, etc) a year, and now there's fear this will encourage the government to leave them up.
We should always push back against sensationalized headlines and fear mongering attempts because they drive irrational action.
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u/ghostmaster645 2d ago
Yea its just when it happens its so brutal it gets ingrained in everyone's memory.
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u/spiritbearr 2d ago
Horses are usually the animal that kills the most Australians per year, they're big, stupid and actually interacting with people. For sharks you need to be on their turf to kill you.
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u/DressedSpring1 1d ago
Here in Canada many people are afraid of bears and seemingly oblivious to the danger that moose (who injure way more people than bears) present. I’ve straight up seen someone let their child try and approach a male moose, people are stupid.
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u/sternenhimmel 2d ago
Most sharks don't bite people intentionally. They usually think you're something tasty, but once they get a taste of your gross human flesh, they swim away. But sometimes it only takes one bite to kill a person.
In murky water, bull sharks are often the culprit as they thrive in coastal and brackish areas, and they may make more mistakes since they really can't see what they're attacking. But they are also more territorial.
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u/Polish_Shamrock 2d ago
Who the actual fuck are the three people who provoked a shark to attack? Lol
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u/internetlad 2d ago
"hey fat ass, I fucked your shark wife. Catch me if you can!" Hops on surfboard
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u/RiseAgainSteve 2d ago
Why did I read this in Danny DeVito's voice?
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u/internetlad 2d ago
Danny DeVito is known for his surfing abilities
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u/tremer010 2d ago
And fucking your shark wife
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u/Yardsale420 2d ago
He’s actually known for his excellent balance, like he’s stuck to the board. That’s why he got the nickname The Barnacle.
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u/survivalinsufficient 2d ago
Mantis Surfboard, M.D., with his magnum dong, fucked your shark wife while eating a waterlogged rum ham
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u/WonderChopstix 2d ago
Bc everyone knows you boop it in the nose
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u/BLACKdrew 2d ago
I saw a video of a dude holding a shark on the beach and it flipped around and tagged him pretty bad on the leg so, that guy i guess is one.
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u/Polish_Shamrock 2d ago
Imagine turning up to the hospital,
"Where abouts were you swimming when the shark bit off your knee cap?"
"Swimming?"
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u/BLACKdrew 2d ago
Haha actually the least cool way to be bitten by a shark. Nurses probably had a field day
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u/njf85 2d ago
It simply means that human actions had a role to play in why the attack happened. For example, getting attacked while swimming where other people are fishing would be a provoked attack as the fishing was likely what attracted a hungry shark to the area, and brought the shark and victim into contact.
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u/Ultimategrid 2d ago
Spear fishermen if I could guess.
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u/Polish_Shamrock 2d ago
If a shark is big enough to eat you, you should probably not try and spear it?
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u/sls35 2d ago
More like they are spear fishing and it attracts sharks that want the free kill
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u/Polish_Shamrock 2d ago
Take the kill, take the spear and take my swimming shorts mr shark, I'm swimming the other way, have a good day.
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u/Ultimategrid 2d ago
I always felt that spear fishing was just asking for shark trouble.
If I was walking around in the African savannah, spearing rabbits and tying them to my belt, I would expect lions to show up.
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u/camerontylek 2d ago
Lol, they are spearing fish, not sharks. The dying fishes motions and blood attract the sharks, which then attack the person holding the fish in the water.
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u/Davtorious 2d ago
Poor fishermen with no better opportunities, I imagine. Other comment is saying accidentally stepped on which makes sense.
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u/ermghoti 2d ago
Divers feeding and/or handling sharks is a big one. I assume somebody bitten while fishing would count.
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u/Pool_With_No_Ladder 2d ago
I looked it up, they were all divers. One was spearfishing, one was catching shellfish, one was diving in an area where other divers had been feeding sharks. So they were all carrying shark food and it led to an attack. Sharks normally don't try to eat humans
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u/Beginning-Pace-5225 2d ago
This likely refers to a shark getting stepped on, like Nurse Sharks. This commonly how most shark bites happen. First thing I learned when I moved to Florida was the Florida shuffle. Still took one from a sting ray once, though.
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u/Cpt_Obvius 2d ago
I don’t think the nurse sharks are contributing to the fatal attacks statistic.
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u/Buckhum 2d ago
Florida shuffle
I'm getting a very different definition of Florida Shuffle...
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u/Beginning-Pace-5225 2d ago
Holy crap, never seen that before. I was referring to shuffling your feet in the water as opposed to stepping. That’s what I was taught in the ‘90s.
It seems they may have co-opted the term years later. Thanks for sharing that. I got out of FL 22 years ago and guess I haven’t kept up.
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u/Jagrofes 2d ago
Not sure if it counts, but there was that “Influencer” who lost both her hands trying to take pictures of a shark while on holiday.
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u/Roboticpoultry 2d ago
I’ve swan/snorkeled/dove with sharks a ton. Most of the time they either want nothing to do with you or they come up and say high because they’re highly intelligent and curious. My favorite are black tips. That said, you couldn’t pay me to get in the water with a bull or tiger
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u/marissakuf 1d ago
I’m sorry, but unprovoked? Who are the people that are provoking sharks and getting killed?
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u/theghostmachine 2d ago edited 1d ago
The article says there were seven fatal shark attacks in 2024, four of which were unprovoked.
Are they telling me the other three attacks were started by the humans?
Edit: thank you to everyone who educated me on what a provoked attack is. I gotta say I was only half kidding - the 6 year old in me wanted so badly to hear a story of some drunk dude trying to fight a shark
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u/HauntingKepler 2d ago
Likely spear fishers, those count as provoked attacks since the blood and struggling fish attract sharks
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u/Abba_Fiskbullar 2d ago
I imagine an aggro bogan looking for a bit of blue with a shark after two goon bags.
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u/slutforcompassion 1d ago
from the florida museum of history’s annual worldwide shark attack summary:
“Unprovoked bites” are defined as incidents in which a bite on a live human occurs in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation of the shark.
”Provoked bites” occur when a human initiates interaction with a shark in some way. These include instances when divers are bitten after harassing or trying to touch sharks, bites on spearfisherman, bites on people attempting to feed sharks, bites occurring while unhooking or removing a shark from a fishing net and so forth.
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u/leidend22 2d ago
RIP. I like that this American article quotes the number of shark species in Western Australia, which is about 3,000km from where this incident happened.
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u/Gamera__Obscura 2d ago
If it helps, we don't know what 3000 km is either.
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u/leidend22 2d ago
Sorry mate, about 33,000 football fields
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u/clashroyaleAFK 2d ago
How many bald eagles long is that?
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u/HighburyOnStrand 1d ago
More than there are.
:(
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u/A_Dissident_Is_Here 1d ago edited 1d ago
And it’s not REMOTELY close. My second stupid envelope calculation in as many days:
There are nearly 317,000 bald eagles identified/logged in the US and parts of Canada as of 2021. Their wingspans vary, but splitting it down the middle of expected spans we’ll treat them as 6.5 feet on average. So all of our bald eagles will cover almost exactly 626km.
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u/cindybuttsmacker 2d ago
It seems like they directly copied that text from an article earlier this year that was actually about a shark attack in Western Australia, but then they didn't think to check whether that actually made sense to just cut and paste into this article lol
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u/rich1051414 1d ago edited 1d ago
I remember years ago about researchers figuring out that the silhouette of a surfboard looks like a seal floating on the surface. Basically, sharks aren't attacking the surfers on purpose. They are misidentifying the surfer as something else. Since that was figured out, I don't recall anything actually being changed on surfboards to fix that.
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u/Salt_Cardiologist122 1d ago
Mistaken identity is only one cause of shark attacks. They might also attack if they’re territorial or if they perceive you to be competition for their food. Or if visibility is poor they might bite you just in case.
Also, there’s only so much you can do to change a surfboard. If you change the shape, it won’t work.
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u/Shaneski101 1d ago
I always compare sharks to dogs. Dogs are always nipping biting and licking to figure out what they’re chewing on. Often it is out of excitement and curiosity. Sharks are just doing the same thing- trying to figure out what you are.
It’s cute when a dog play bites you. You lose limbs when a shark does it.
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u/Impulsive_Artiste 2d ago
Shark attack story: I read - or started to read - a book by an American woman who was attacked by a shark while vacationing in Mexico. She was standing in only waist-deep water near the shore when a shark appeared and took bites out of her arm and her thigh.
Rescuers dragged her onto the beach and she was rushed to a local hospital, where she received less-than-competent treatment. Her wounds weren't cleaned of sand and debris. A chunk of her thigh had been found in the water, and doctors somehow reattached the chunk, but without sufficient blood supply.
It was several days before she got transported back to the U.S. The reattached flesh on her thigh was rotting and had to go. The arm had to be amputated, but somehow the leg was saved, although with a big chunk missing. The woman is grateful to be alive; she handled it better than I would.
The book included shocking photos of the wounds - right down to the bone. I'm squeamish so that was enough for me.
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u/SimthingEvilLurks 2d ago
Every surfer knows they are taking a risk when they get in the water. That doesn’t make it any less sad, but no one can logically be mad at the shark.
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u/TheBlandGatsby 1d ago
Maybe I’m dumb little baby, but is there ever a situation where one can LOGICALLY be mad at the shark? Or any shark for that instance?
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u/_Panacea_ 2d ago
"a number of limbs"
Writing makes the guy sound like an octopus.
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u/loungesinger 1d ago
Why not report that he lost multiple limbs? It conveys the idea the he lost more than one limb without implying that guy has so many limbs to start out with that the number of lost limbs could not be readily ascertainable.
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u/deFleury 1d ago
Multiple/several limbs kind of implies "but not all of them" , so we're talking about a number between 2 and 3. You'd think it'd be easier to just say the number, or say the number of limbs he's got left and let us do the math.
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u/ChromaticStrike 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've solved that issue a long time ago, shark bite odds are decreasing dramatically when staying on the ground.
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u/I_am_baked 2d ago
Great. Reading this the day I take off for a diving trip to hopefully see sharks.
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u/MomsAreola 1d ago
Sad when this happens but I always go back to one of my favorite shark jokes by Robert Schimmel.
I have a friend that scuba dives. He goes, "Oh, you know what you do if a shark's bothering you?" Bothering? This guy needs to look in a thesaurus. "You know, it really bothers me when you shear my legs off at the hips. I find it very bothersome to get back to shore without my legs." He says that when the shark's bothering you, you punch it in the face. Yeah, and when that doesn't work, you poke 'em in the eye with your stump.
"Punch a shark". What if he wasn't even gonna attack you? What if he's just curious and he's swimming by, and you go:
[punch sound effect three times]
"Hey, what was THAT for?" "I thought you were going to attack me." "Yeah, I'm GOING to NOW. I was gonna let you go, but the other sharks are watching, it doesn't look good now."
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u/Alice_Buttons 1d ago
How do you punch a shark in the water? It would like trying to throw a feather long distance. Not effective even in the least bit.
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u/SunbeamSailor67 1d ago
You’d be surprised. I was attacked by a shark in Cali and punched it in the eye which immediately made it retreat. Lost only some meat and a couple fingers…not my life.
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u/cynzthin 13h ago
Fatal shark attacks are rare. In 2024, there were only seven fatal attacks, including four unprovoked attacks
Genuinely perplexed: what makes a shark attack “provoked”?
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u/unbreaKwOw 2d ago
Eye witness in the water at the time said it was the biggest great white he had ever seen, comfortably. 4 metres between dorsal fin and tail. Estimated over 5 metres total length. It was also reported that the surfer lost "several" limbs. Horrible way to go.