Surfing Waves

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-32276681

Poor kid.

http://snowbrains.com/reunion-island-bans-surfing-due-to-shark-attacks-90-sharks-to-be-killed/

Sad to loose another surfer. I was going to find a way to post this....Now I don't need to.

Reunion island surfers got it bad not only shark attacks but they banned surfing on some of the breaks. I know they have been surfing anyway risking both sharks and getting fined. I wonder what color the kids board was?

http://www.theinertia.com/surf/13-year- ... rk-attack/
He is so young! It didn't really register until I saw the photo. Very sad.

Reunion shark attacks seems quite high from the statistic..

Sad indeed, may he rest in peace and his family overcome the loss..
Shouldn't even read the comments on the page, makes me think about how people are losing their empathy. It's a shark infected area, for sure. But it's the only area the locals there have. No use pointing fingers to the kid right now. What should be done, instead of banning surfing, is using nets to keep sharks away from the shore or some other sort of countermeasure. What they are doing is like forbidding car driving because of car accidents..
In one of those links I've read that the government said they were going to kill 40 sharks trying to make attacks less frequent. Did they really do it?

Nets don't keep sharks away they kill sharks. Something changed over there and the number of shark atacks went way up. They don't know why. It still remains a problem.

Wasn't aware of how they worked, I've seen now that they are supposed to make sharks die by drowning if captured. I pictured nets would actually just close the passage for big animals like sharks close to the shore.

That is tradgic..

Perhaps they should do some testing with black and white striped boards there! With some dummy surfers on top or something.

they have those kinds of nets too but it is difficult to maintain them in breaks and impossible where there is boat traffic. That would work for a tranquil beach where they swim only. Think of an island surrounded by reef. How do you put out a net that will protect a break? What about when the surf is huge? They are bad for other wildlife as well and dangerous to swimmers or divers who get too close too. Don't know the solution but if they can figure out stuff in Reunion, maybe the rest of the world can take a lesson from that.

It is tragic whenever someone passes away, especially a youngster but killing sharks and banning surfing is not the answer to this situation.
I'm no marine biologist but is there a reason why so many dangerous sharks are near the breaks in reunion? Or is it just the way it is, in which case surfers are entering into the sharks natural habitat at their own risk. Surfing like many other watersports is a dangerous sport and as such you should assess the risks before entering the water.

KS

I'm guessing the food is becoming scarce there for the sharks.

Maybe food is plentiful so there are more sharks. Sharks aren't living off eating humans. If they are starving they will die off and if that were the case then killing a bunch of them will solve the problem. They don't know what is causing the problem. It seems in Australia where they use nets they have totally stopped attacks. I always thought the nets didn't work but apparently they do work.

Very sad indeed.

Reunion is a beautiful little island. Went there in 2011 and surfed a couple of times. Was a bit nervous, especially with turtles popping around you all the time. The first day I was there, I chatted to a bodyboarder who'd just gotten out of the water because he sighted shark!

The west coast is where the main waves are. A marine reserve was opened a few years ago a few kilometers offshore. The locals claim the reserve has as a result increased the amount of fish off the West coast and as a result, the sharks, particularly bull sharks, are feeding there and increasing significantly in number.

The ban on surfing is an idea but not a very good one. The locals can just go a few kilometers down the road from an area under the surfing ban provisions and surf in areas that do not fall under the closure laws. This is exactly what we did.

It is a terrible shame and I hope things can be done to improve the conditions for the surfers out there while decreasing the risk of attack with as little collateral damage as possible.

RIP young man.

A time will come when we all live together in harmony.. Until then we gotta remember it's their ocean, if you're in the Serengeti you don't get out of the land rover if there's a pack of lions nearby or hippos or crocs. Gotta educate ourselves about their environment and ours. We gotta learn to respect and move forward with knowledge. Poor boy.