Shark attack good Samaritan: The horror never goes away

A BALLINA man who helped drag a shark victim to shore has told of the horror of that day and how the pings on his phone, in the middle of the night, set off by tagged sharks, “freak’’ him out.

Darren Rogers, right with Dan Webber and Kevin Young. Picture: Jerad Williams

A BALLINA man who helped drag a shark victim to shore and fought in vain to save the surfer’s life has told of the horror of that day and how the pings on his phone in the middle of the night, set off by tagged sharks, “freak’’ him out.

Darren Rogers’ gripping account of the day Japanese surfer Tadashi Nakahara was killed by a great white shark at Ballina’s Shelly Beach — February 9, 2015 — is detailed in a new book, Sharks Never Sleep, by journalist, filmmaker and television producer Brendan McAloon, to be published by Hardie Grant Books next month.

His words in the epilogue are chillingly prophetic. Rogers says the mouth of the Richmond River, close to Shelly Beach and Lighthouse Beach, is the most dangerous spot on the coast because of the bull sharks and the great whites.

Tadashi Nakahara, 41, left, died from his injuries after being attacked by a shark off Ballina's popular Shelly Beach.

“In my opinion it’s only a matter of time until someone else gets bitten. It will happen again. And there’s nothing that can stop it,’’ he tells McAloon.

His warning was vindicated soon after the book was sent for printing. On September 26, Ballina surfer Cooper Allen, 17, was mauled at Lighthouse Beach. Three people have been killed by sharks in northern NSW waters since 2008, and eight have been injured.

McAloon writes that the NSW Department of Primary Industries and the CSIRO tagged 37 great white sharks off the NSW north coast in 2015. The acoustic transmitters are supposed to be detected every time the sharks swim within 500m of the “smart drum lines’’, which are satellite-linked listening stations set up as part of the NSW Government’s controversial shark strategy.

Rogers installed the shark alert app on his phone so it would automatically warn him.

The horrific wound to the leg of Ballina shark attack victim Cooper Allen in hospital. From Channel 7 newsreader Amanda Abate's Twitter account

“It’s pinging all the time. It’s just constant. And that’s just the tagged ones,’’ he tells McAloon.

“There are lots of whites around close to shore. They are absolutely everywhere. The ones that freak me out are the ones that ping at midnight or at 1am or at 3am. I just think: ‘(Expletive) hell, they never sleep, they never go away’.’’

When Nakahara was attacked, Rogers had been paddling through broken water to join a group of surfers on what seemed a perfect day. He then realised something was wrong when most of them paddled back past him, so he’d spun around and returned to shore.

Cooper Allen, 17, was surfing at Ballina's Lighthouse Beach when a shark bit him on the upper thigh, leaving four huge gashes.

Gazing into the channel, he had seen two surfers trying to bring someone in. The 50-year-old asked another surfer, 19-year-old Brooke Mason who had witnessed the attack, to hold his board while he waded and swam out to help.

Mason, who had taken a year off medicine studies at the university in Hobart to pursue her surfing dream, was within 15 metres of Nakahara when he was attacked.

“… I looked at him and just saw him take a huge breath and go under. I thought he was just going for a swim. All of a sudden there was a big splash and pretty much instantly, there was blood everywhere,’’ she says in the book.

Rogers tells how he saw that Nakahara’s legs had been severed just below the hips. They tried to keep his head above water as they dragged him in, knowing the big shark was hanging around and could attack again.

“I’ve had some intense experiences in my life but this took it all to a new level of intensity … and just horror,’’ he tells McAloon.

Rogers says he tried to revive the surfer with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for several minutes until paramedics arrived.

He then left in a hurry, wanting to avoid media. He showered, dry-retched, jumped in his car and drove away.