Authorities should take care not to remove “attack” from the lexicon used to describe incidents between sharks and humans, according to an organisation that represents victims.
“You can’t sanitise it too much,” Dave Pearson, a spokesman for the Bite Club, said.
Mr Pearson suffered severe arm injuries a decade ago when bitten by a bull shark off Crowdy Head on the NSW North Coast. “It’s not like there’s a tap on the shoulder from a shark saying, ’do you mind if I eat you?”
Mr Pearson was responding to a report in the Herald and The Age on Wednesday that noted Queensland in particular was looking to avoid describing shark incidents as an “attack” in its public communications. Conservationists support the apparent shift.
NSW’s Department of Primary Industries (DPI) also prefers “incidents” or “interactions” in its formal reports, while deferring to victims of bites to describe them as they prefer.
Mr Pearson welcomed DPI’s efforts to research what causes a particular shark behaviour, while taking into account the often traumatic experiences for those involved.
While some bites were so-called mistaken identity events with the shark wrongly picking out a human, others were predatory. In the latter case, sharks stalk their potential prey before making a rush with the clear intention of feeding, he said.
“They don’t just randomly bite into stuff floating on the surface,” Mr Pearson said.
In his case, Mr Pearson was surfing off the coast when a bull shark swam up from below on his right, bumping and biting his left arm as it went past. Fellow surfers stayed back and helped him to shore, possibly saving his life from excessive blood loss or a possible return of the shark, he says.
Mr Pearson says his group counts about 400 people from Australia and abroad, including family members of people lost to fatal shark bites.
While acknowledging the odds remain tiny that someone will be bitten by a shark, he said it remains a visceral experience for those directly affected or others who respond or view the incident.
“I’m that one-in-11.5 million chance,” Mr Pearson said, adding it also rankles when people say people are more likely to die from a falling vending machine than a shark bite. “I’ve never seen a vending machine in the ocean.”
Mr Pearson often visits other victims, including going surfing with them. It can be a therapeutic experience although it only takes the sound of a splash behind to make everyone hyper-vigilant, the 58-year-old said.
“Of course, my love of the ocean is greater than my fear of sharks,” he said.
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