Witness: Shark Attack Victim Never Had a Chance

Tiger shark found caught in netting after deadly Gold Coast attack
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 9, 2020 5:52 PM CDT
Updated Sep 10, 2020 12:30 AM CDT
Witness: Shark Attack Victim Never Had a Chance
Surfers wade in the water waiting for waves off the Southern Gold Coast area of Greenmount Beach in Australia.   (David Clark/AAP via AP)

The victim in the first fatal shark attack on Australia's Gold Coast since 1958 was so badly injured that rescuers had no chance of saving him, witnesses say. Jade Parker, who helped lifeguards bring 46-year-old Nick Slater to Greenmount beach, says his fellow surfer was attacked in waist-deep water and suffered a massive wound stretching from his groin to past his knee. He said he found a 1.5-inch shark tooth embedded in Slater's surfboard. "It was a good-size bite to the board," Parker tells the Seven Network. "I do not want to get to the gory parts but he was in a bad way. He was not conscious. It looked like he had already pretty much passed away at that point in time."

The beach, like dozens of others in Queensland, was "protected" by shark netting, although experts say the netting provides little protection, since sharks can easliy swim under or around it. George Roff, an ecology professor at the University of Queensland, tells the Guardian that drones and other detection measures can reduce the risk, but "the idea that you can control sharks, in general, is wrong." Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said Wednesday that a dead tiger shark was found tangled in a net at Greenmount Beach after Slater's death, the AP reports. She said investigators will try to determine whether it was the one that attacked him. (More shark attack stories.)

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