I've always admired the Australian "have a go" attitude which permeates their nations psyche and it looks as though that battling spirit also applies to surfers and their response to shark attacks.
There have been three reported shark attacks in Australia during this Jan, which have seen surfers punching the sharks to fight them off. Heres one of the stories from Tasmania a few weeks ago (the pic is of the board the rider was using)
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Off Australia's southern island state of Tasmania, an Australian surfer punched a five-meter (16-ft) shark in the head as he rescued his 13-year-old cousin who had been bitten on the leg and dragged beneath the water Sunday.
The pair were surfing when the white-pointer grabbed the girl's leg and dragged her down twice. Her cousin, Syb Mundy, 20, paddled over, punched the shark, put the girl onto his surfboard with him and paddled into shore.
Mundy said hitting the shark on the head "was like hitting a brick wall -- it was that dense." "It was easily the length of a car. It was just a monster," Mundy told local radio on Monday.
"Once it let her go she was bleeding pretty bad. There was a lot of blood in the water. I think it just didn't like the taste of her, to tell you the truth," he said.
The shark circled the pair as they paddled toward the beach.
"The shark actually got on to the wave. We looked to our left and this thing started surfing toward us and we just headed straight to the beach," said Mundy.
"I can remember seeing the eye come out of the water and the head and I was going to try and poke it in the eye if I could get close enough," he said.
* Source: Reuters
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