Only last night I explained to a friend from Ballina how my brother Dan has been enjoying the great surf at Lighthouse Beach for the last 18 months almost alone.
Then this morning he was stopped by some old women, who may just have saved his life, as they ended his usual pre-surf shark based conversation with them with them waving goodbye laughing: "Good luck, it's been nice knowing you".
As Dan paddled about 20 meters from shore he saw a two and a half metre shark swimming in a wave, and in what he described as, "Uncannily like the Mick Fanning encounter" he had to wait until the wave had passed so he could see whether the surfers further out had been attacked; as he could hear them screaming.
Dan Webber was on hand for the shark attack at Ballina this morning.
"Coop's had been bitten on the right thigh, it must have been just before 9am as the lifesavers were setting up the flags and I was standing in hip deep water screaming out to them to call an ambulance," Dan told me.
Once he was on shore the wounds to the victim’s legs became apparent. His wetsuit had several major puncture marks in the top of his thigh and the tail of his board had been mauled. "I was sitting up on my board when it hit," he told Dan, who said it seemed to take forever for the ambulance to arrive, but that the victim remained conscious throughout the ordeal.
Ruminating on his own good fortune Dan said, "Had I not chatted with the ladies for that short time I may well have been duck-diving the wave I saw the shark in." I asked him if this encounter might stifle his daily Lighthouse beach surfing regime. "Having been in the water for the last two attacks and seeing the wounds might just have been enough to make me think twice about surfing out there every day," he answered.
There have been 19 shark attacks between Byron Bay and Evans Head in the last 15 years. Four of those were at Lighthouse beach. 17-year-old 'Coops' (Cooper Allen) is recovering at Ballina District hospital where he is in a stable condition; while every attempt at creating shark deterrents in the area has failed miserably.