In the last 20 years there have been 6 fatal shark attacks off the coast of Western Australia.

The Western Australian department of fisheries has come up with a novel solution to help warn of nearing sharks. Tag em and track them. Listening stations are to be positioned in 38 locations along the coast including 20 along the coast off Perth. If a tagged shark comes within
400 metres of a listening station a message can be sent to the appropriate lifeguards.

“The use of the technology that delivers real-time notifications of tag detections hasn’t been used in an operational sense anywhere else in the world,” Dr McAuley told the PerthNow website.

Of course not every shark has been tagged! This project has a target of tagging 100 sharks, there are many more out there, though it will give researches a better understanding of sharks habits. How often they visit beaches, is it seasonal, do they return to the same beaches etc.

Still you shouldn’t be too concerned about shark attacks. Whilst there has been 6 fatalities in the last 20 years, in the last year alone 10 people drowned in the surf. So take care over the summer.

More info on The Shark Monitoring Network Program

I have a friend who is learning to surf and someone gave him this old MR. I took a fancy to it, so swapped him one that was more suited to his beginner abilities.

There’s not much in the way of dimensions or anything on the board. “Bob Marggetts” is written along the stringer. Anyone know any details on Bob and his work with MR?

It has a few dings that need to be repaired, anyone one with suggestions on a good repairer on Sydney’s Northern Beaches?

Flash back to May last year when we actually had some decent waves. Today is big and chunky, but not as good as this. When are the winds, and swell going to line up next??

Here’s several hollow right handers. It was cranking that day and not many out…

The 80’s was not the best of times for fashion or music.  When mixed with surfing there can be devastating consequences – this first video is a serious case in point.  I dare you to look away, be careful you don’t start humming along!

After watching this first one, I trawled youtube to see what other cringe worthy surfing clips I could find. I found the following two, but I think you’ll agree the first takes the cake.  If you are aware of any more surf music tragedies – let us know in the comments.

I always tell people, make sure you have a back up.

So I was playing around with the site, planning some modifications – got into the backend and the database.  Lo and behold I have successfully deleted the database, and nary a backup in site.

So that’s only a couple of years of intermittent blogging.  Never mind, I’ll just have to start from scratch again.