Shark attack at Merimbula leaves woman in hospital and beaches closed
Main Beach at Merimbula is now closed for 24 hours. Photo: Michael Doc Ryan
A woman is in hospital after being bitten by a shark while swimming at Merimbula on the far South Coast of NSW.
The 63-year-old was attacked by a shark at Main Beach at about 7:00am and received lacerations to her hip, back and buttocks, according to paramedics.
She was taken to South East Regional Hospital and is in a stable condition.
Bystanders had reported seeing fins and a large animal, Inspector Robert Whitney from NSW ambulance said, but there was uncertainty initially if the attack had been caused by a shark.
"It was pretty clear that it had been a shark attack as paramedics arrived on scene," he said.
"What we could see is that the patient suffered multiple wounds in what would have been a terrifying event, paramedics did a fantastic job in treating the patient down at the beach before transporting to hospital."
Surf lifesavers said the woman had been swimming with a friend close to shore when she was "bumped" in the back by the shark.
Her friend assisted her to shore and called emergency services.
Thirty kilometres of beaches surrounding Merimbula and Pambula will be closed for 24 hours while investigations continue to confirm the size and type of shark.
Surf lifesaving drones will be launched to conduct surveillance of the waters off Merimbula, with the Department of Primary Industries also monitoring marine activity.
© Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Comments
time to cull them sharks
Scared??? Stay out of the water.... Means more waves for me.
Yewwwwwww!!!!!!
CULL CULL CULL
Lucky lady
Luckier than the last attack in that area.
Yep time for a clean up... they don’t seem to be on the brink of extinction any more..... the buggers are 50m off the beach
Send out the drone, we’re all safe now!!
Couple weeks ago at pambula we paddled straight out after 10 surfers came in all at once thinking it was a perfect opportunity between crowds. Once we finished our surf Turns out they all came in at once because a large shark cruised through
That happened to me Willi my first surf at nusa dua
Surfed Geger one morning 6-8' super tidal flow as usual, paddled as hard as I could for 20 minutes right up the reef to be by my lonesome, just sat up and saw this monumental tail thrash about 50 mtrs from me, no one for 250 mtrs, just sat there with my feet up on the nose thinking well what now, you cannot do that for long when its perfect, so you gotta get into some right, you never know if you never go....... ; }
Classic.. absolutely classic!
That is one hell paddle.
Was only there last weekend surfed the left with about 40 to 50 others but surprisingly still got quite a few waves.
40-50 guys man that mental, many shoulder hoppers I'm thinking right ; }
It's always busy there but was a weekend and a long weekend in Vic, i even saw a guy from where i live 6 hrs drive away.
Not really shoulder hoppers as such lots of just average surfers floating around, and only a handful of rippers it wasn't as ruler edge perfect as can be (until the tide dropped) so deep ones often not getting made and bigger ones breaking wider catching the crowd out.
And lucky for me i just seemed to have that rare surf in a crowd where i was in the right position a lot of the time.
Yes was a few Victorians there.
Shit happens.
Get a fckn grip. The Earth is a wild place in some lucky, remnant pockets. Have your wits about you and enjoy the sometimes abrasive proximity of a true and free existence if you get the opportunity.
If the idea of this scares you then run and fckn hide you coward.
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
– D H Lawrence, “Self-Pity
Monty Python Blowin......come back ya coward, yells guy to shark while standing in waste deep water with one leg missing.
If there’s someone out there with a more irrational fear of sharks I’ll buy them a beer.
Cant see myself putting my hand in my pocket anytime soon.
What you gonna do ? Stop surfing or take it on the chin?
I have an irrational fear of sharks now. Never used to but got bumped during a night surf at aussie pipe, by myself bumped off my board and circled. I paddled in when the first crew were jumping off.
I told them about the shark but they paddles out anyway. by the time i took my wetty off there were about 40 or 50 guys out..
Now i cant surf by myself, especially in WA. Which sucks because i often check it and no ones out when jakes is 1-2ft
Mate , that fish at Pipe was just an amorous groper. Time to move on!
Meet you out the point for the dawnie ( you first).
PS- Got a mate who lives and dies by being first in the water. Was camping near him at a WA left one time when I caught him creeping past waaaay before first light and he quietly told me it was pumping and to meet him out there. I bundled out of bed and bolted out to the jump off. Couldn’t see him on the point whilst I got changed into my wettie and couldn’t spot him in the moonless, inky blackness of the line up . Raced out into the sharky waters against every instinct just to stem the onslaught of ridicule.
Got out the back - still literally pitch black - and couldn’t see him anywhere. Tried catching a couple of waves but it was still too dark to see anything. Yelled out to try and locate him. Finally caught a couple of shoulders from the dim glow of four feet of whitewash, then came in across the shark pit and struggled till I located the keyhole exit.
Back on shore and still no sign of him...? Only one way in and out of the spot and I was perplexed. Got back to camp, still in the dark. Checked the time and it was 1AM. I’d only been asleep a few hours after continuing the previous night’s partying next to the fire solo with abundant beers/mull.
In my addled state I’d only dreamt my mate had headed for a surf.
Survived to tell the tale. No one could understand when I told the next day’s returning dawn patrollers that Id missed the early cause I was already tired from the early early session.
Haha! great story Blowin. I don't think I could top that one.
Wow. If it’s where I think you’re talking about, I’d have wanted a few beers prior to paddling out there at midnight!
Have to agree with your often stated sentiment. It’s the wild, if you don’t like that don’t worry about it.
Glad the woman is ok. All the best
Classic Blowin, you must have been rightly fucked up haha
I never get up that early, sleep is an under appreciated past time.
Nothin better than a few ropes on the chin aye blowin
Hahaha thats gold blowin.
Im working on my fears.Ill be right in kalbarri i think the only sharks ive seen here are about 3 foot long skinny things.
FArk. Poor woman. That would have been a traumatic experience for her and all involved. Hope she's healing well. Heavy.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9357765/The-chilling-Facebook-p... A few photos in this article
'The shark came up from behind, I didn't see if beforehand. But it was funny, all week we'd been swimming through massive schools of fish and right before it hit me, I was thinking 'where are all the fish'?' she told the publication.
Well gee....
Very lucky lady to get off with puncture wounds only! Large schools of fish are on the move as are the (protected) sharks who prey on them. Tis the season to be very wary when having a paddle! All the best for a quick recovery to the clubbie involved!
Those earlie morning ocean swimmers are sitting ducks flappin around 200 mtrs of shore in the morning light on there lonesome ...i understand their exercise and ocean addiction but they just look like shark lures to me ...lucky lady to be still talkin about it
swimming in bait balls is um.......risky.
hope she heals up well and is able to get back to doing what she loves.
Bait balls are usually around Easter so I'd say its in the date zone, everyone needs to keep their eyes open and take care, I remember surfing South Wall Ballina by my self and watching a big dark shape come up the beach closer and closer and thought oh yeh here we go WTF is that, after figuring what it was...... Then what's checking it out, turned out nothing just me with wild eyes ; }
find it hard to believe these days with all the publicity about bait balls and sharks that any one with any common sense would be swimming or surfing near them.....
So it's not just surfers who don't like clubbies, it seems. 'The 63-year-old surf lifesaver has undergone surgery and is in a stable condition, posting from her hospital bed that she was "fine".' One very lucky woman.
It's always tragic when someone gets hit by one, but the common sense factor seems to have gone out the window in so many places.
That article states she started her swim at the jetty - which is inside the Lake - and she must have gone out through the deeper water at the Lake mouth at the Bar and then down the beach. Sat morning's tide was on the make for a 9am or so high, which is when the salmon often move to the inshore gutters, and it had been raining with stacks of fish in previous days. The only warning sign missing would have been a dorsal fin.
A mate's daughter was in the lineup at Pambula the day that 12ft white cruised past the pack, and the Bar has had a stack of pointer sightings over the years. They are always around.
People need to accept that there are inherent risks when you enter the ocean. I'm surprised that a "decorated lifesaver" would still swim in those conditions.
The radius on those punctures looks pretty large, so it would appear she is very, very lucky. Hope she recovers well and quickly.
Same deal with the Tathra attack a lifesaver doing daily morning swim
unfortunately this one was Full Consumption
http://www.sharkattackfile.net/spreadsheets/pdf_directory/2014.04.03-Arm...
True, although the Tathra attack occurred out behind the rock shelf at Shelley Beach in quite a bit of water where waves very rarely break. That shark was observed swimming north to south along the beach just behind the breaker line towards the surf club for a few minutes before she swam straight into it. Kids have paddled nipper boards and the like out there and jumped off the wharf for years but the ocean swimming thing is relatively new. We used to snorkel those shelves as kids and if you were out the front you felt pretty exposed.
Very lucky lady.. hope you recover asap.. blowing your story was absolutely amazing told all my mates today.. all had a great laugh .. even one ex sandgroper .. reckons your a legend/ lucky/ fuckn mad .. classic
When surfing your presence is often a bit covered up by all the breaking wave vibrations and surf noise. Often you have land or beach taking up a good portion of your immediate surroundings. Often you stay relatively still. You generally don't move across much territory.
But out there ocean swimming, in still water, any shark within 250 metres probably knows you are there. That is 250 metres in all directions or 196,349 square metres of territory at any point in time. If you swim a few kilometres in the ocean your circular zone of detection is multiplied many times as you move along, Your detection zone covers a massive area every swim. Swim every day? That is maybe over 500 square kilometres you spread your vibrations in a year.
They are out there. They are very curious.
Think how many shark hits there are on surfers where the uninjured surfer is shown holding up their damaged board after the event. Take away that surfboard shield and you’re just an unprotected thrashing animal on the surface.
Ocean swimmers impress me with their bravery/ naivety / recklessness / fair assessment of risk.
Oh well sharks were here first, its their backyard. Don’t like them stay at home. The earth will explode if one of them is fished. Get over it. Its the victims fault. Shouldn’t have been there. Go home, stay safe, watch the fearbox. Put duct tape over the wounds. Whatever. More chance of being killed by a walnut during a lightning storm while taking a selfie. Get over it. Sharks were here first...
Did they sus out what type of shark it was from the bite marks?