attacked and killed by a shark<\/a> off Long Reef Beach on Sydney’s northern beaches on Saturday.<\/p>\nLong Reef and nearby Dee Why Beach remain closed today.<\/p>\n
Psillakis had been alerting other surfers to the shark before he was attacked, Dee Why local and former pro surfer Toby Martin said.<\/p>\n
“We’re very aware of the playground and the environment that we’re in and conscious of the marine activity,” he told Nine’s Today programme.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, he was the last one furthest out to sea and ultimately paid with his life.<\/p>\n
“But it’s important to recognise this is just a super rare incident.”<\/p>\n
The Long Reef Boardriders Association held a memorial on Sunday evening for Psillakis, who was “loved by everyone”.<\/p>\n
“Merc and (twin brother) Mike have spent more time in the ocean at Longy than any people on the planet,” the club said on social media.<\/p>\n
The fatal attack, the first recorded on the northern beaches in nine decades, has led to a pause on a trial removal of three of the 51 shark nets in NSW.<\/p>\n
The nets are installed at beaches between Newcastle and Wollongong at the start of September and removed at the end of March.<\/p>\n
There is no net at Long Reef Beach, but “smart” drumlines are used to monitor for shark activity and were in the water when the shark attacked.<\/p>\n
Nearby Dee Why Beach has a shark net approximately 500m out from its surf lifesaving club.<\/p>\n
But the nets are contentious as they only stretch 150m, do not extend all the way to the seafloor and entangle other wildlife.<\/p>\n
Animals can swim around and under the nets and they offer little protection, Macquarie University natural sciences professor Culum Brown said.<\/p>\n
“You cannot tell the difference between unprovoked attacks on netted beaches versus other beaches,” he told the ABC.<\/p>\n
“If they do have any effect, it’s largely psychological rather than providing any kind of protection.”<\/p>\n
A trial removal of nets from one beach each in the Central Coast, Northern Beaches and Waverley local government areas has been paused following the attack.<\/p>\n
Councils and the state government had been waiting for the other to nominate beaches where nets could be removed.<\/p>\n
Central Coast councillor Jared Wright said the council recently reaffirmed “unanimous support” for participating in the trial.<\/p>\n
“We want to be using a mix of more modern and innovative solutions,” he said in a statement on Monday.<\/p>\n
Amid the debate, Martin urged people to get back into the ocean.<\/p>\n
“We don’t stop driving because of one fatality,” he told the ABC.<\/p>\n
“It’s a beautiful place to be, the ocean … it’s a safe place.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A “super rare” fatal shark attack at a major metropolitan beach has added to questions around the efficacy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,85,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-10058","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}