The odds at North Wall are getting higher.
After the rainfall last week you can see the brown trail out to sea but the water itself at lighthouse and Shelley's is still clear.
Hope the guy is going to be ok.

Looks like another white by that photo,wonder if thats possibly the same shark as last time,should be taken out from the chopper,dont really believe in coincidences,just like last time and the byron attack the culprit is still lurking around nearby.

A week or so back an old Byron boys ski got hit on at belongil , Bite on the nose of his clubbie ski which was i.d. as from a juvenile GWS 2-3mts
And a surfer got a bite to the arm around yamba 2 days ago

thats a white. surfed the ox just after the attack.
Another attack mid-morning in clear water.

Yes there was dirty water out of the river but the inshore zone was clear.

Seems GWS like sunshine and clear water to see what they are attacking.

Hope the guy survives, kudos to those who got him to the beach and administered life saving first aid.

My last surf there was a year ago
3' , clear water and sunny
A big 8 footer got very close in shallow water...end of that session
Ballina is getting a reputation

Just saw a shark off Cabarita point while surfing

Large dead Sperm whale not far off sapphire beach..being monitored ?????

Carcass is still intact ,got me fucked why they don't tow the thing a couple of miles offshore ?

Briefly surfed a rivermouth in the broader Byron area late afternoon today.. Water was a little murky and all senses were rather heightened - but really seemed just as per usual for this kind of location (waves were really good, though a tiny crowd.. I wonder why!). 

Water clarity on the Tweed Coast beaches was stunning yesterday too. Hard to imagine the danger that could be lurking just beyond the lineup.. Compared to South Oz it just doesn't feel sharky here. Not yet anyway.

Fisheries have granted permission to catch and kill the GWS in the Ballina attack : abc news.

Just watched the footage captured of a GWS cruising along the back of the surf and even through the white water, actually inside of the breaking waves
Bloody scary as I always thought a GWS wouldn't like sand all through its gills
Thumbs up to everyone that assisted getting the fella off to hospital and for a positive outcome

Angels and Tallows sends shivers when you out there alone. Sometimes actually makes you want more crowds in the water, ha! I try to think of them as stray dogs..

wonder why they gave the kill order?

I'd say because they've got the Skullcandy Grom comp on and a kid getting bit during school hols with the cameras running would be very bad for business.

They should have done it straight away,now all the little do gooders will say well it mightnt have been THAT shark.....there gonna do a fly over and if they spot a shark will call the grom contest off apparently.........

Apparently some guy got attacked at Lennox this morning as well.

second guy not hurt luckily, just knocked off his board

Kid knocked off board. Cops choppers and boats everywhere. Chaos. Apparently large shark spotted at Boulders heading south.

Not kid , kiwi bloke

How people think that following a shark attack, the next logical move is too go and kill off some sharks is beyond me. Sure, if a shark barged into my loungeroom and atttacked me, i would want some retribution. The perfect analogy to use still escapes me, but i mean, should we start cutting down all coconut trees as a preemptive measure considering they kill alot more people worldwide annually than sharks do. Again, not the best example but it just doesnt make sense.

The way i see it is, is that a bullshit political move to take advantage of stigma of sharks who are so misunderstood.

So nick its cool if a dog attacks and kills your son or daughter or badly injures them? maybe they walked past its front yard? yeah so your cool with that well im not.If a shark/ dog or what ever attacks me or mine i would have it taken out not left to do the same again to someone else,im not saying slaughter every shark im saying when its obvious like yesterday you take action not sit there talking about maybes, at least the culprit has been dealt with and people dont have to cull all sharks.

I agree with Simba.
I think we all agree that sharks are relatively intelligent creatures, and that they are out there in the surf a lot more than us surfers and swimmers see. For every attack there is probably lots more close encounters and situations where they cruise past without us even knowing.
But once they do investigate and realise that us humans are pretty out of our depth in the water, and how easy prey we are, the individual shark sees a human in the water as a super easy food source.
So once a shark has attacked it becomes a much more dangerous creature to human lives. Not to dis similar to the stories you hear of Lions and Tigers that prey on communities in other countries once they figure out how easy a human is to prey upon.
You hear stories about older weaker bears attacking humans because they have lost their ability to hunt their usual prey, I dont see how this can be any different with a shark.
Therefore I think an effort needs to go into destroying the particular culprit even if there are a few casualties along the way.

Is there any drum-lining or net set ups around this region??

No nets or drum lines.

In my 40 odd years of surfing the Nth Coast and Sthrn Qld I've never seen many sharks until the past few years. I'm under the impression that sharks are protected and fish aren't, so fish numbers continue to decline were as shark numbers increase. I'm not Einstien or anything, but maybe this has a major bearing on the increase of attacks and sitings, with the sharks being in larger numbers with not as much food available.
And maybe if we don't want more attacks, we might have to consider a cull or increasing the fish stocks.

Ask any fisho from Fitzroys territory to round the country to Exmouth ,the GWS is in huge numbers compared to 20-25 years ago, Maddog M in your waters 25yrs ago 2 or 3 pointer sightings by surfers a year ...now nearly a weekly occurrence
We are in trouble...seriously this is getting out of hand
Freeride you've always got the line out ...are you seeing heaps more ?

Kingfish floating fish traps nearly wiped them out, they are back in huge numbers and the South Coast cannery closure salmon are back in huge numbers rarely went above Sydney now they migrate into S/E QLD whites favourite food to supplement the whale run.

The CSIRO have over 250 whites tagged why isn't this information public knowledge and available on their web site like in the USA. I would love to know if one of these beasts was a resident off shore from where I surfed. Duty of Care, I heard they make the info available to SLSC. - Don't quote me on that.

4mtr GWS beast cruising next to surfers at Wategos today.

Needs a sat tracker put on it , got to find out if this thing is a resident or not.

The journalist riding in the chopper commented that the shark was heading towards the kids on surfboards and they intervened by flying low and scaring the shark away

Had they not been in the air at that time...........more than likely another fatal attack.

Only seen a bit of the chopper footage briefly, it appears that the news chopper is going back and forth filming the shark cruising round near the surfers, surely the decent thing to do would be to go in low and tell them to get the fuck out of there???
Bad luck if flying low didn't scare the shark off.

Sharks seem to be everywhere these days, sighting are way more frequent where I surf these days.

Here's the video of that shark at Wategoes today.

Ballina advocate has a pic of a very lucky Dolphin at North wall.

Here it is.
http://www.northernstar.com.au/news/lucky-escape-for-dolphin/2698475/

Been a few guys surfing NWall lately.
I thought I saw a shadow surfing the Point yesterday. Lots of kids out.
Hectic.

That shark looks to me to be a bullshark possibly a tiger.

Just cull them, government and the fisheries arnt the ones out there surfing . we are . cull as many as we need to make it safe . only solution

Heard the bloke has lost one leg. Battling to save the other one.

Weekend sea conditions look good to float a tasty bait out at Nth wall .

.303" old school or 7.62 mm NATO for the new boys in town .Choppers can take photo shots but not a real shot that can save lives!! Bloody dogooder greenies. Get real!
Just take out the nasty ones that trouble and bite then and there but don't eat Finn soup. Save the 100,000,000 from Finn soup but distroy the 1000 odd pig dogs of the sea that bite and menace us people world wide. Talk about saving ecosystems and lives.

Best wishes and pray for strength to the lad that got bit the other week ago over in N.S.W. We had a bad one hear in S.A. a short time ago aswell !

Over fishing and in the waters of S.A. , the idea off cage diving and the tuna pens don't help the surfer and swimmer at all.
"Don't feed the wild animals please"
"Don't teach the Sharks new tricks". Thanks Val . The shark gal.

Hucky.

A ski riders board got nibbled on at Burleigh this morning, no injuries .

Another one at Ballina

yeah I was just about to solo surf some little dribblers at the Point when the chopper started circling and the fisheries tagging boats pulled up just off the Point.
went fishing instead.

Oh shit just heard. Sorry Udo didn't know what you were referring to.

sam Morgan gets attacked by a bull shark at Lighthouse beach , surfing by himself in the evening about 6 .30 , do we cull all the bulls now?

haha ..Ok lets cull all the bulls , the whites , the tigers , bronze whalers , so you can go surfing ! one world one solution ,exterminate!!!

ah dolphins are the main issue , we could get the Japanese out here to kill em all , as they have the experience at Haji, and or create a huge SeaWorld , from Snapper to Kirra , so no more complaints from surfers , as there will be none and a money making opportunity , plus employment doing guided tours and maybe even the people who are into beastiality , could train the dolphins .....have to remove their teeth first!!

Perhaps they should set up dummy surfers sitting on a board and dummy swimmers permanently anchored well off surf beaches up and down the coast with really powerful electric fields around them that zap the hell out any sharks that approach. This would over time create an association between these type of shapes and unpleasant shocks to a wide range of sharks moving up and down the coast and local resident ones.

If they were out there day and night, over the long term they would be checked out by hundreds of sharks and have a real impact on behaviour. Electric current based repellents do not have to be 100% effective to all sharks in all situations to be useful in re-training sharks to be wary of humans.

In the long term you can tag and spot them from planes or helicopters all you want, but this will just raise the fear level among tourists and surfers and have no impact on what the sharks do day to day and their reactions to swimmers or surfers floating around in the ocean. If you paddle out at Ballina in the near future, no amount of tagging or patrols will really make much difference to your safety, cause nothing material has changed in the ocean and the shark population.

If behaviours are shifting towards more encounters and interest in us we need to do something practical to change their behaviour not just study them, post sightings/positions on web sites and count them. If netting is not used the zapping dummy idea seems practical and very likely to have an ongoing impact.

I'm a bit confused by some people's comments that seem to be putting the increase in attacks on the North Coast down to increased media coverage and more mid-week surfers - i.e. the incidents aren't above trend and/or there are more people in the water.

With all due respect, I think the number of incidents in the last 12 months are way off the chart. Now unless there has been a doubling (or more) in the North Coast's surfing population in that period, it seems logical to conclude some natural environmental factors are at play. It can't just be a case of more cops = more crimes (due to higher detection rates).

That said, I'm sure less attacks are slipping under the radar overall. For example, that guy who got attacked by a Bronzie in Warrnambool in June/July but only went to the media after Mick's JBay experience because he thought surfers should be reminded about the risks of surfing alone, especially at dusk as we has. That said, broad daylight with company doesn't seem to be doing much on the North Coast!

Got attacked at 6.30pm, near sunset - a known dodgy time for sharks...
Got attacked on a beach next to a rivermouth - a known shark hotspot..
Solid rain previous days - river churning out a "come here sharky" brown trail...
Ben mentioned beach water slightly discoloured + add dimming light at sunset makes for poor underwater visibility....
Right on new moon cycle.. Ask a fisho...
Incoming mid tide....
What fuckn more do you want...... Now let the shit fight begin....

I just read on a facebook thread about the "age of entitlement"..... I'd have to agree..... People have turned their backs on common fuckn sense.... Nature.... Environment.... If it wasn't deadly serious I'd be laughing.......Well nature doesn't play along with this "age of entitlement"..... Yeah do a shark cull.... Knock yourselves out.... Have a big flake bbq on the beach...... But they'll be back..... And the next fuckn idiot that thinks he is above nature and it's laws will be munched.... then we'll all have another retarded argument.... Ad infinitum.... If you think you are entitled to pursue this self indulgent activity at 630pm in the evening, near a river spewing rainwater, in a known shark hot spot, you are!! I am.... We all are.... But don't whinge about nature biting you on the arse.... If you don't like the odds, surf on dead low tide at 10.30am on a point far from a river in crystal clear water....
"Enter at own risk"...

Gotta agree SD, this would of been one of those times when paddling out with your mates saying, "jeez it's a bit sketchy/sharky isn't it."

Still no good for Sam, hopefully he's OK.

Only a few days ago t@g helicopters spotted a 3m shark in that very spot.

here check this out http://m.northernstar.com.au/news/rare-whale-found-dead-on-beach/2545761...

Couple of local observations.

First, you are statistically far more likely to be attacked by a shark between the hours of 9-3 than you are in the early morning or dusk, so the old chestnut about dawn and dusk is just that.

Ballina had about an inch and a half rainfall on Sun (36.2mm) most of which fell in a series of slow moving thunderstorms which rolled in a SE/NW direction off a seaward located trough line. An inch and a half of rainfall is not much rain for a sub-tropical high rainfall area like Ballina. It coloured up North Creek on the dropping tides and barely, barely coloured up the main arm of the Richmond on the dropping.
I spent all day Mon and most of Tues fishing and patrolling the beaches, creeks and rivermouth. On the bottom of the tide there was a bit of barely coloured up water coming out of the river.
By afternoon rising tide the water was back to clean.
It was not by any stretch what you would call Bullshark water. No mullet running, no big schools of bait in shore.
You'd pick November as the least likely month to run into a bullshark.

Added to this we've had the first strong inflow of the warm, blue EAC in the last 72 hours. Thats been a way stronger factor for water quality than an inch and a half of storm fall.

OK, he was surfing a rivermouth just before sunset, but really it didn't seem like any kind of sharky vibe, other than the one that permanently hangs around this region was in effect.
Experts told us the whites would move on when the baitfish and whales moved on and they haven't.
Still being spotted. This is an issue with an over-population of sharks, not a result of increased human risk taking. There are far, far less humans in the sharks domain here than for a long, long time.

I would also like to see the reasoning of the shark expert who proclaimed a bullshark. I have my doubts on that and suspect another juvenile white shark.

Here , here Freeride! I think we need the species to be confirmed before everybody cries bull shark.
How anybody knows what species a shark is from a quick glimpse, with the amount of times most people have even seen a shark in the wild,has me stuffed. I've seen quite a few over the years diving but most of them you get a good look at as you're in the water with goggles and usually get a few seconds to look at it but be buggered if I'd know what shark type it was when I've seen the few whilst surfing.
You're on the surface and only get a fleeting glimpse at a fin or tail at best so unless you've spent years studying fin types etc the margin for error would be pretty high in my opinion only.
Anyhow let's hope he has a speedy full recovery, and something , be it nets, lines, barriers, relocation or whatever can be done to help stop Ballina being the shark attack capital of Australia.

Agree completely with freeride. Was on the water all day on kayaks at byron, warm blue summer water ... different to the normal conditions we expect to see bull sharks in but ideal season wise for our usual run of juvenile whites...... not that this year has been very 'usual'. No bait fish up this end either and no residue from the 63mm of rain we got sunday

From the pics I agree with some sort of whaler (bull shark is a river whaler)

Reason being the bite mark on the board was semi circle with a pattern of small closely spaced teeth marks.
A white bite will have a little more irregular, larger, more spaced teeth marks..

Sharkboy first to defend sharks (again) - sharkboy first to make a dickhead of himself (again). Seems to be a common theme here...

ahhhh come on theween - race aint over yet mate, hang in there - your still a chance.... don't give up big fella.

Just want to add that there has definitely been an increase in activity around here too, lower mid north coast. The shark problem is becoming more widespread. Having surfed for 25 years I have only just begun to have shark encounters and hear directly of them from friends. Three myself this year confirmed. Have add a few possible sightings over the years previously but not certain. Just last week there were 5 close encounters around the beaches. Only a matter of time I reckon before someone gets hit here.

Where abouts CD?

My experience in the stockton bight; I surf the southern end of Stockton Beach a couple of times a week and spear around the breakwall weekly. In the last six years I've had 3 definite encounters between Stockton and the Sygna, but the most recent was over 2 years ago. This year, on a few occasions, I've surfed and speared with a seal in the water. Even with all the activity at the start of the year, I've not personally seen anything and not spoken to anyone who has.

Are those Ballina beaches still closed today? Many surfing around the place?

Was just down at N. Wall, fun glassy head high wedges.
5 guys out.

Cheers FR

Fisheries Nsw - 10 55 am
Thursday - helicopter sighting.
Shelly Beach, Ballina
White shark

SHARK REPORTS LENNOX HEAD NSW

Nov 13th, 9am

Fisheries NSW - helicopter sighting.

North end of seven mile beach - Lennox Head

Two white sharks moving offshore.

Peace of mind at many spots is a thing of the past? Year's ago I paddled out pre-dawn at Crescent day after day with some mild concern but mostly keen be out there on my own for a while. Now I would be quite hesitant to do that