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08/04/05 By Marz Heaps of fish attacting some unwelcome vistors. Huge schools of Salmon, Bennito (Tuna) and pilchards have been showing up in our states South West over the last week. Sightings and also on one account being chased in right to the beach have been reported. Wednesday while local surfers were surfing Bears a large school of Pilchards swam through the lineup. Witnesses say "That this huge shark launched itself out of the water just 100 metres away from the surfers and was white on it's underside". Earlier in the week another local surfer was buzzed by a Bronze whaler at Moses rock where the shark headed straight for him at high speed then suddenly veered off. Another shark sighted at Smiths Beach and unconfirmed reports of a fisherman in his boat off Cape Naturaliste seeing a Tiger shark. This morning 13 year old Elle Clark from Margaret River and her four friends were out enjoying some knee to waist high waves at Couchies South of gas point when they got their scare of their life on the first day of their school holidays. "We were really close to the shore only about 3metres out, I came in and was looking at my friends surfing, the dolphins out the back and these fish in the waves. I saw this big grey shape in the water moving really fast and it didn't have a nose on it like a dolphin and was getting close to my friends, I started screaming shark, shark to my friends and they came running in over the sand bank with this shark coming in as well with it's mouth open. It was pretty scary we were all pretty scared and walked home" said Clark. In recent months there has been a lot of lobbying to get cray pots shifted further out to sea from the Margaret River area, as some crew believe it has to do with the bait in the pots attracting them. You might have seen those poxy stickers on some cars in the region and while some have been offered to surf shops to put in there store to hand out, some shops have refused to put them in there and good on them too. This increase in shark sightings have been happening way before the arrival of the supposedly new and abundant amount of cray boats in the area over the last few years and this I will prove to you soon. The problem lies with the water temperature, El Nino, El Ninia and his sister El Maria or whatever. Our fish stocks are rapidly diminishing because of this as breading patterns and normal migration of species are also trying to come to terms with our ever changing weather patterns. Salmon started there run earlier again than last year, there are pilchards, Tuna and Benito in the water. Christ crew are even still catching the odd Spanish Mackeral off Augusta which are more common further north of there. No I'm not typing this up to try and put the fear into anyone as the fear is already there in most of us. Some crew are finding going for a surf nerve racking and not as enjoyable as it used to be. I just believe that people have the right to know what's happening and where the sightings are happening, not to create hysteria, but so that people are aware. There are bulk loads of bait fish, Salmon and various other fish around at the moment, so take care and hopefully the run should be over in a week or two. So if you have witnessed a shark sighting notify the Police so they can not only keep a record of the sightings, but also take any necessary action. |