Teenager Killed By Shark While Surfing Wooli Beach

A teenage surfer is dead after a shark attack in Wooli, the small town that sits between Yamba and Coffs Harbour on NSW’s mid-north coast. 

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the teenager was identified as 15-year-old Mani Hart-Deville, a Year 10 student at South Grafton High School who was surfing at Wilson’s Headland, a popular lefthander that is clean on prevailing northerly winds (as today had). 

The attack left him with severe wounds to his legs. Local woman Helen Dobra told the Herald, “Another surfer reportedly tried to pull the shark off the boy before they got him out of the water.”

“I talked to one of the surfers and basically he said he was in the water and a really big great white shark came up and took a bite and [the boy] was screaming out,” Ms. Dobra told Nine News. “The surfer said the shark then came in again for another attack. He said another surfer bravely went and tried to get the shark off and then they pulled [the boy] out of the water.”

Despite surfers’ efforts to help revive the boy after getting him to shore, he died at the scene. 

Beaches in the area including Wooli, Diggers Camp and Minnie Water have been closed after the attack.

The attack occurred just a month after the death of Rob Pedretti, 60, at Kingscliff, also in NSW. Wooli is around 200 kilometres north of Kingscliff. 

The two deaths in close proximity are the first deaths in the region since Tadashi Nakahara was killed in a shark attack in Ballina on February 9, 2015.

This tragedy will hit surfers hard. The Wooli area is a favourite haunt for surfers chasing isolation with its beachfront campgrounds, relative untouched beauty, and uncrowded beachbreaks.