False alarm in search for missing surfer

Crews searching for an Irishman who went missing while surfing off Australia’s coast since Saturday morning thought a helicopter sighting had yielded a clue to his whereabouts, only to find it was a false alarm.

According to Byron Shire News, the local newspaper in Byron Bay where 20 year-old Stuart Butler went missing, a helicopter spotted what appeared to be blood on the rocks beside where he had been surfing.

However, when ground crews, including police, went to the spot on foot, they found the blood appeared to have come from a fish which had been caught and scaled.