Sharks hunted after surfer is bitten in half

Two massive sharks, one as “big as a car”, are being hunted off the west coast of Australia after they attacked and killed a surfer at a popular beach.

Bradley Adrian Smith, 29, died on Saturday afternoon after he was bitten in half in the Indian Ocean off Left Handers Beach, south of Western Australia state capital, Perth.

Witnesses said Smith tried to beat off the sharks, which officials said were probably great whites, although they said they could have been bronze whaler sharks.

“We saw the guy start scrambling around and saw him clinging to the shark and … trying to whack it and trying to get away,” surfer Mitch Campbell said.

An ambulance officer said the victim suffered extensive injuries to the pelvis and abdomen. He died on the beach before medical workers reached him.

A witness, who was not named, told Sky News television that two teenagers who pulled the victim out of the water said one of the sharks was “as big as a car”.

Television news footage showed a large part of Smith’s board had been bitten off.

A government boat was searching for the sharks today and officials said they would try to kill them.

“We have firearms on our boat if necessary to use them to kill the shark,” Shark Incident Response co-ordinator Tony Cappelluti said.

Another surfer said the attack was distressing but would not stop him from surfing.

“We were going to go down to the beach for a surf and a couple of blokes came up and said, ‘don’t go down there – somebody’s been bitten in half by a shark,”’ Bart Mulder told Australian Broadcasting radio. “It won’t stop me surfing.”

The shark also found an unlikely ally – with the dead surfer’s brother saying the animal should not be killed.

“I don’t believe that the shark should be killed just for the sake of what’s happened in this situation,” Stephen Smith said. “I don’t believe that Brad can be revenged by killing a shark.”

The last fatal shark attack in Australia occurred last year on the Gold Coast in Queensland state. An 84-year-old man was killed while swimming in a canal linked to the nearby Pacific Ocean.