Monthly Roundup: Three More Shark Attack Deaths In Australian Waters

Over the past month, three more people have died following shark incidents in Australian waters.

This run of attacks comes five months after the last burst of headlines, when four shark attacks struck New South Wales in 48 hours. One of them, an attack on a 12-year-old boy in the Sydney Harbour, was fatal. Another left a Sydney surfer in his twenties without his right leg.

This month, all three victims were spear-fishermen, and all three incidents were fatal.

On May 24, 39-year-old Michael Jensz was killed at Kennedy Shoal on the Great Barrier Reef, roughly 160 kilometres south of Cairns. It was the middle of the day. 

Authorities have not confirmed the species responsible, though the shortlist is familiar. Bull sharks and tiger sharks are common throughout the GBR. Great whites have been known to pass through too, though they generally prefer cooler water.

“The shark population there is certainly increasing and they’re becoming very in tune with the sound of motors, the sound of your spear gun,” local spearfisher Ebony Harper told the ABC.

A week earlier, 38-year-old Perth father Steven Mattaboni was killed while spearfishing at Horseshoe Reef, just there off Rottnest Island. Rottnest, as you’ll remember, was the site of the 2021 Rip Curl Search won by Gab Medina and Sally Fitzgibbons, and is also the location for The South32 Rottnest Channel Swim – a 19.7km open water long distance swim starting from Cottesloe Beach (Mudurup) to Rottnest Island (Wadjemup).

The attack occurred around 10am. A five-metre great white shark was spotted roughly 80 metres offshore around the time of the incident, according to Surf Life Saving WA.

Then, three days ago, another death.

Thirty-five-year-old Daniel Turpin was fatally attacked by a suspected 4.5-metre shark while spearfishing off the Albany coast. His father and 14-year-old nephew were on the boat.

The shark struck only ten metres from shore.

After Turpin was pulled from the water, his nephew reportedly drove the boat while his father performed CPR on the run back to Albany Marina. He could not be revived.

“They live in the water,” Turpin’s father said afterwards in a statement to the ABC. “Whether they cull them all or not, it’s not going to bring my son back.”

Albany may sound familiar. It is home to one of the world’s most successful artificial reefs, a project that transformed a straight stretch of coastline into a shallow, sucking left-hander that now, in light of recent events, breaks an unsettling distance from shore.

Three deaths in one month.

Tragedies, all of them.