Hunt for man-eating shark after great white claims a third victim

Police named the victim as George Thomas Wainwright, 32, a US citizen from Texas. Mr Wainwright was in Australia on a working visa and had been living in North Beach, Perth.

He was taken by a great white shark about 1.30pm local time on Saturday while scuba diving just 500 metres off Little Armstrong Bay on the north-west coast of the holiday destination of Rottnest Island. A 10-foot shark was seen swimming close to the scene of the attack.

Police said the dead man’s two friends aboard a 25-foot boat made an emergency call reporting that they had seen a large great white before they pulled his bloodied body from the water a short time later with “obvious traumatic fatal injuries.”

Within an hour authorities issued a rare order to hunt down and kill the predator, which is a protected species. It is the first such extreme order ever issued in Western Australia. All the beaches on the island remain closed.

A great white of the same size is believed to have taken a 64-year-old Australian swimmer off Perth city’s Cottesloe Beach on October 10. The beach is 11 miles east of Rottnest Island.

The man’s remains were not found, but his shredded swimming trunks suggested the size and type of shark that took him.

Both attacks followed the 4 September death of a bodyboarder attacked by a shark described as 15ft long at a beach south of Perth. Witnesses said they were unsure of the type of shark. Scientists say three sharks, rather than one, more likely are responsible.

The state government set tuna-baited hooks off the island yesterday, the first time authorities have used an emergency legal exemption from the state protection of great whites as an endangered species in the interests of protecting the public.

Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett also said his government would consider shark culls, responding to locals’ complaints that shark numbers are increasing off bustling beaches in one of Australia’s fastest growing population areas.

“I am very concerned. This is a tragic situation and is the third shark attack fatality we have had in only a matter of weeks,” he said. “The state government issued an order for the shark to be caught if possible.”

“We will certainly look at a shark cull as a government. Culling could be considered if those sharks are staying around popular beach areas.’’

But Barry Bruce, a federal government marine biologist with extensive research experience in tracking the movements of tagged great whites via satellite and in examining their behaviour, said it was unlikely that a single, lurking predator killed the three recent victims.

“What we’ve seen tragically is three cases of people by sheer bad luck being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

“If you’re in the path of a white shark that is in the process of hunting its natural prey, that’s an exceptionally dangerous situation to find yourself in.

“A more plausible explanation is that this is the time of year when sharks move along the coast, and there are undoubtedly multiple sharks out there following this exact pattern.”

He said the great white population was not growing but shifting around the world for reasons that scientists do not fully understand.

Great whites are known to follow whale migration up the west Australian coast through the current spring, and return south late in the summer.