A TEENAGE surfer was torn apart and eaten by two great white sharks off an Adelaide beach yesterday in Australia’s second fatal attack of its kind in a week.

Nick Peterson, 18, who was being pulled behind a boat about 250 yards off shore, was attacked by the first shark as he fell from his board in full view of a crowded holiday beach about six miles from Adelaide’s city centre. A second shark ate the rest of his body.

The attack stunned people on the beach and left Mr Peterson’s three friends, who were in the boat, in deep shock. One witness said that the shark that led the attack “caught his left arm and took him around the boat and then another shark came in and they just took him to pieces”. The whole area is now closed to swimmers.

There had been several shark sightings in recent days along Adelaide’s metropolitan coast but locals said that little had been done to warn swimmers.

A member of a nearby surf life-saving club said that he saw a white pointer under his boat only last weekend.

Fraser Bell of the South Australia Sea Rescue Squadron said that the four young men had been at sea for about 30 minutes when the attack occurred. “He fell off the surfboard and the shark appeared and took him. It tore him apart . . . apparently it tore him in half and the other shark came in and took the rest,” he said. “They were just boys having a good time. The weather was perfect and they were just doing what young lads do.”

Police said that Mr Peterson’s three friends, all aged 16, were unable to give a full description because they were so traumatised. Mr Bell said: “They’re in deep shock, they’re a wreck. They tried everything they could think of to rescue him but unfortunately the sharks had taken him by that stage.” Police and emergency services searched for several hours but found no remains.

Last weekend Mark Thompson, 38, suffered fatal injuries when he was attacked by a shark while spear-fishing on the Great Barrier Reef off the Queensland coast. He had extensive injuries to his left leg and bled to death after being pulled back on his boat.

In July a surfer died in Western Australia when he was attacked by a shark described as being “as big as a car”. The last fatal shark attack off an Adelaide beach was in l99l, when a 19-year-old man was killed by a white pointer while diving.

The great white is a protected species in Australian waters and as a result its numbers have increased in recent years.

There was a time when the species was threatened with extinction, a fear that prompted the Australian Government to impose a maximum fine equivalent to £20,000 on fishermen caught killing the shark.

These days, like the crocodile that also risked extinction in Australia until a few years ago, sharks are becoming much more of a menace to humans, raising the question of how to deal with the heightened risk to life and limb that they pose.

Every fatal attack leads to intense debate over how to deal with the culprit if it is caught.

If or when the two great white sharks responsible for yesterday’s death are found, beach safety officers, conservationists and the South Australian Government will have to decide whether to destroy them or leave them free. Some marine conservationists argue that as the ocean is their natural habitat, they have as much right to be there as humans beings.

It is not necessarily a view shared by most Australians, for whom swimming and surfing is a national obsession but where bathers have learned to live with the ultimate predator.

Despite Australia’s reputation for shark attacks, there are relatively few each year and International Shark File figures indicate that most attacks occur in North American waters.

The first documented attack in Australian waters was in 1791 and there have been more than 625 attacks in the past 200 years, about 190 of them fatal.

GREAT WHITE PREDATOR

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