If you were watching the news on Sunday night you probably saw that a man was attacked by a great white shark while scuba diving off City Beach. But as exciting as that sort of headline might be to media organisations, the reality was a little less dramatic.
The diver was in the water at Three Mile Reef about 11:00 Sunay morning when he was bitten by the shark. He and his diving buddies were quickly picked up by some nearby fisherman and were instructed by Water Police to make their way in to City Beach to rendezvous with the ambulance.
On approaching the beach half an hour later, the patrol IRB transferred the injured man to the beach and then to the First Aid Room, where the ambulance arrived only a minute or two later.
The media weren't far behind, keen to get a good "shark attack at Perth beach" story. Unable to elicit a suitable panic-promoting official quote, they did manage to round up a couple of random beachgoers to agree that the beach should have been closed.
The story made national news on all TV channels, and they all described the incident as happening to a man "diving off City Beach". Later in the story they variously gave the actual location as three kilometres, five kilometres and eight kilometres offshore.
For the record, the attack site is in fact seven kilometres out to sea and slightly south of City Beach - roughly level with the dog beach. Or to put it another way, if you left from City Beach in a direct line to the northern end of Rottnest Island, you'd pass over the spot about a third of the way there. That's quite a long way out for even the keenest swimmer.
In terms of distance, it's the equivalent of closing City Beach because of a shark sighting off Trigg Point - only less sensible, as there'd be far more chance of a shark at Trigg travelling down the coast than there was of Sunday's shark travelling along the line in to City Beach. There were undoubtedly other sharks far closer to the coast than that one.
Certainly shark attacks are something that happen, and will happen again. If you're a diver in the open ocean, Sunday's incident may well cause concern. But for the average beachgoer, it's not something to be alarmed about.
