Shark attack at Evans Head beach: Surfer seriously injured, beach on New South Wales north coast closed due to incident

A Great White Shark swims past a diving cage off Gansbaai about 200 kilometres east of Cape Town. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the 1970's and 1980's, the Great White is now a protected specis in many parts of the world. In South Africa shark cage diving forms a growing business in the eco- and adventure tourism industries. Reuters/Ho New

Surfer friends Craig Ison and Geoff Hill went surfing in Australia’s Evans Head beach on Friday but their early morning leisure plan turned into a disaster because a shark attacked one of them. Ison, a 52-year-old resident of Evans Head, had a near-death experience while surfing with his friend, Hill, approximately 100 metres offshore Evans Head beach on the New South Wales north coast.

Hill shared with ABC News that he and Craig were just paddling out at around 6:20 a.m. when a shark suddenly appeared and attacked his friend.

“We hadn't even got to the stage of trying to catch a wave and he called out to me, ‘Go in, there's a shark!’” Hill recounted in the ABC News report.

Hill said that the next scenes he saw include the shark grabbing his friend, a lot of thrashing around in the water and a rather large tail. Detective Inspector Cameron Lindsay confirmed that the victim “actually fought off the shark.”

Hill witnessed his friend get away from the shark, get back on his surfboard and paddle his way to the beach for first aid treatment. Ison sustained severe injuries on his arm, thigh and hand during the shark attack.

Hill along with the beach walkers, who were on the shore during the incident, helped Ison before the emergency team arrived. Surfboard leg ropes were used as a tourniquet to Ison’s injured leg and Ison’s surfboard was used as a stretcher.

“Those people are to be praised for their quick thinking, particularly those injuries that needed to be stopped [from] the blood loss and looked like they've saved this man's life,” Detective Inspector Lindsay told ABC News. Ison, who was in stable condition despite the injuries from the shark attack, was rushed to the Lismore Base Hospital for surgery.

An unnamed biologist from the Department of Primary Industries looked at the captured photos of the surfboard that Ison used when he was attacked. The biologist, who specialises in sharks, believes that Ison was attacked by a Great White shark.

ABC notes that the Main Beach at Evans Head, as well as Chinamans Beach and Shark Bay, have been closed to the public for 24 hours following the shark attack that left Ison severely injured. Evans Head is located 25 miles south of Ballina, a tourist town where another surfer got severely injured from a shark attack on July 2, according to a report from The Seattle Times.

In February, a Japanese tourist in Ballina got mauled to death by a shark. Recreational scallop diver Damian Johnson, 46, became Australia’s second victim of a fatal shark attack this 2015 when he was mauled to death on Saturday in Tasmania, according to a report from the Associated Press.

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